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Artist
Gaslight Radio
12+ albums
Queenslandindie rockunderappreciatedpost-rockawesome and underated
about
IT’S there in all the great bands, the ones which create something original, something that endures. It’s the struggle, and not just the endless miles and broken strings and sleeping on floors. That’s the fun part. There is the hunger to get this sound in your head out and heard, the never-ending battle against compromise, the fight, as Shakespeare put it for Polonius in Hamlet, to thine own self be true. That’s the crucible that forges the greatness. A certain breed of Australian bands know all about this. It’s something to do with the heat, the light, the vast distances and the difficulties faced by those who refuse, or cannot, conform to preconceptions of what Australian bands should sound like. Among them The Saints, The Triffids, The Go-Betweens. And Gaslight Radio. The band, formed on the Gold Coast holiday strip by brothers Rory and Marty Cooke then based in Melbourne, has quietly assembled a powerful body of work across 10 years, numerous EPs and three albums of high distinction, Hitch on the Leaves, Z-Nation and Good Heavens Mean Times. Is it possible to make music more at odds with the image of surf, sunshine, high-rise and conspicuous consumption of Queensland’s holiday playground? Probably not. But anyone who has ventured into the spaces between its gleaming spires knows there is another country down there. Gaslight Radio songs are things of fervent and sometimes delicate beauty, they can soar then snarl, or glide on a wall of hypnotic guitars. Their strong, sophi
