- Brisbane four-piece Tape/Off are undeniably a pounding, guitar-heavy noise making outfit, but they are far from your standard grinding grunge or moshing metal band. Their brand new, sophomore album, Broadcast Park, is about to be unleashed – a full four years after Chipper, their debut full-length effort first hit the airwaves.
Some albums tend to contain a few nuggets of gold that have to be searched for while the listener endures a trudge through a desert of dross, but Broadcast Park genuinely qualifies as a high quality album with a great selection of tunes that will continually nourish your spirit through many repeat listenings.
Apart from a brief and somewhat mournful vignette called Monogamy And Mid-Strength Beer, the other ten tunes on Broadcast Park are all packed with punchiness, but contain enough variations in light, shade and colour to make this an album worth listening to all the way through – and then starting all over again.
You may have already heard Day In, Day Out, the teaser track released in advance of the album. It’s equal parts angry, resentful and resigned – exploring the now long-standing tradition of the ‘get a haircut and get a job’ abuse that so many young people who refuse to instantly submit to capitalism’s demands for conformity are subjected to. Wake in Fright, the new single, also details the underlying social hostility faced by outsiders.
According to drummer Branko Cosic the creation process for Broadcast Park differs significantly to the band’s first album. Rather than being written and compiled in bits and pieces, the tunes on this new album were very much written and recorded by the whole band working together. This may explain why the album feels much more complete and consistently high in quality, but whatever the reason, it is a highly recommended listen.
The band is touring in July, covering all the mainland capital cities except Adelaide which is a feat in itself given that the members of Tape/Off are involved in plenty of other creative projects. It may also explain why they’ve taken four years to get another album out. In the final instance, as they state in the opening track Ithaca Pools, a number named for a century old public swimming pool in inner Brisbane, “I’ve been everywhere man, but I came back here,” and Broadcast Park is certainly a welcome return for Tape/Off.
- Andrew Bartlett.