Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – “An Air Conditioned Man”
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, a band so confident that they gave themselves two perfectly functional band names and then put them back-to-back, are about a month away from releasing their much-anticipated full-length debut Hope Downs. We’ve posted their early tracks “Mainland” and “Talking Straight,” and now they’ve also shared “An Air Conditioned Man,” the album’s opening track.
Coming from Melbourne, air conditioning is presumably a very present concern for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. The band’s finely interlocking indie-pop grooves recall the old school underground rock of their Australian homeland and even more of their global neighbors in New Zealand. “An Air Conditioned Man” is very much part of that lineage, toggling between gorgeous guitar reveries and revved-up, krautrock, influenced rhythmic zone-outs.
“An Air Conditioned Man” isn’t as immediate or catchy as the first two singles from Hope Downs, but it’s just as fully realized, in its own way. The band’s deadpan slackjaw vocals and their twinkling, spun-out instrumentals make for a hell of a combination, and this song serves as evidence of just how well they’ve honed that sound. The song could practically be an undiscovered gem from the Flying Nun catalog.
In a press release, frontman Fran Keaney says:
This song follows the slow burning panic of a salary man. The world around him has become artificial and automated. A street triggers a realization of what he’s lost.
Check it out below.
Hope Downs is out 6/15 via Sub Pop.