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Title:
Z-Nation
Release Date: 8 November 2004
Label:
Woo Me / Love & Mercy
Distributor:
SRD
Website:
www.gaslightradio.com
Z-Nation
is an album of fraught and fragile fallen-angel pop from Australia’s
premier outsider band, Gaslight Radio. Raised in the seaside
city of mixed blessings, the Gold Coast, it was in this land
of neon and fibro that Gaslight Radio was formed by brothers,
Rory and Marty Cooke, two bruised kids from the notorious
housing estate of Burleigh Park who had been writing songs
together since they were teenagers, saving up for equipment
by playing Creedence covers on the hard corners of Surfers
Paradise.
They
do not exactly remember when, but their first show as Gaslight
Radio was at a pilot’s bar at Coolangatta Airport. They
played five songs to twenty indie rock kids and a drunken
Ansett Airlines air crew.
The
Gold Coast is a city of high rises and golden beaches; a place
where the Summer never ends. The reality, however, is city
of extremes - beside the penthouse apartments of Surfers Paradise
is a thirty mile strip of McDonalds Drive-Thrus and $15 hotels.
Not far from the beauty of Kirra Beach and the gated communities
of Robina are the public housing estates of Southport and
Stephens, all abandoned cars and pregnant teenage girls. And
in this land, the rules are clearly defined: life is for fun,
but the politics are conservative and infamously corrupt;
your hair can be long (and preferably blond) but you better
not play any of that faggot music. This is a covers band city.
No-one
really liked them much on the Gold Coast, so they drove up
and down between Sydney & Melbourne for a year, playing
wherever they could get a show, releasing a string of increasingly
urgent and emotional EPs and an elegiac, ARIA-nominated debut
album, Hitch on the Leaves.
Gaslight
Radio’s last show on the Gold Coast was at the Rose and
Crown nightclub in Surfers Paradise. After one song, the gig
was shut down and the band beaten-up onstage by the security.
Gaslight Radio fled their hometown city and moved to Melbourne.
They
quickly signed to Silvertone (famously home to The Stone Roses)
and began work on the follow up to Hitch on the Leaves, releasing
a 7” EP, “Sleeveful of Slight”. Gaslight Radio
continued to make a name for themselves, touring with such
like-minded artistes as Sparklehorse, Yo La Tengo, Pulp, Pavement,
The Breeders, Teenage Fanclub, The Folk Implosion and many
others, but the next two years would be a time of nervous
meltdowns and petty crime. Band members would come and go,
and nearing completion of Z-Nation, the master tapes would
be stolen.
Finally
the relationship with Silvertone came to an end. They just
didn’t see eye to eye with head of Silvertone, (a former
private in the South African army). Silvertone folded in Australia
six months later.
The
legacy of that time is Z-Nation. Brightly shimmering, alternately
acerbic and brittle with nervous energy, then dreamily, longingly
bucolic, Gaslight Radio are never less than riveting. The
band will accompany the UK release of Z-Nation with a UK tour
in November. Dates TBA.
Gaslight
Radio are:
Rory
Cooke – Guitar & Vox / Marty Cooke – Guitar
& Vox / Michael Regan – Bass / Cameron Teys –
Drums
Discography:
“Torchin’
Towns, Hankerin’ Homes” (EP) / “Our Dolelove…”
(EP) / “Is By Bus” (EP) / Hitch on the Leaves (album)
/ “Sleeveful of Slight” (7 inch) / “Chapter
6: The Hard Luck Knights” (EP) / Z-Nation (album)
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