Jungle Songs by Parading
Lost And Lonesome are duly excited to announce the release of Jungle Songs, the second album by Melbourne's Parading.
Displaying all the noise-encrusted melody and slacker virtue that have seen Parading elevated to heroes among Australia’s bountiful dream pop scene, Jungle Songs takes the band’s love for Galaxie 500-cum-Mary Chain pop and strings it together with their penchant for serpentine drone epics.
First single 'Butterfly' overflows with unruly guitar racket and soporific vocals, before opening up into a gorgeous melody and finds its space within the dark and the beautiful as singer/songwriter Tom Barry contemplates the life of a troubled friend.
Paul Kelly’s song ‘Big Heart’ (the album’s second single) seems an odd choice for a Parading cover but the band embrace it wholeheartedly, drawing out the tempo and stripping back the layers to reveal the song’s barest essentials — the winsome melody and sorrowful sentiment.
Tom Barry elaborates: “Paul Kelly is one artist the entire band can agree on. Growing up in Australia with very little of our own culture to be proud of, his songs make us feel like there really is someone in touch with our land and make us feel that way too. “Big Heart” is a great song with a beautiful sentiment. Parading’s version slows down the original and turns it into more of an introspective dream.”
Elsewhere on the album, Parading continue to dip into their bag of noisy tricks — ‘Flying’ delves into heavy swamp-rock while ‘Delicate Flower’ recalls the heady narcosis of Brian Jonestown Massacre at their psychedelic best.
Towards the tail-end of Jungle Songs the band stretch out and explore a more hypnotic vibe. ‘Riverside’ is a gently-picked ballad in which Barry laments of a husband and wife holding tight their deceased infant child in the River Ganges, hoping to meet him again one day; before releasing him to his watery grave, they wonder what form their baby will take in its next incarnation. Radiant backing vocals are added here (and on several other tracks on the album) by Hideous Towns’ Alana West.
Parading close the album out with a double dose of delicious drone — Jarrod Dexter’s viola adds extra menace to Tom Barry’s lion-channeling in the epic ‘Jungle’; the song is subsequently reprised in a glorious wash of guitar noise on ‘Forest’. Full shoegaze closure.
Tracklist
| 1. | Waiting | 2:59 |
| 2. | Butterfly | 4:08 |
| 3. | Flying | 3:00 |
| 4. | Big Heart | 4:43 |
| 5. | Delicate Flower | 4:19 |
| 6. | Riverside | 4:50 |
| 7. | Jungle | 8:14 |
| 8. | Forest | 4:05 |
Credits
Tom Barry – guitar and vocals
Ash Buscombe – bass
Tom Coleman – drums
Keith Mason – guitar
Recorded and mixed by Richard Andrew.
Mastered by Nao Anzai.
