- “Influence”, definition: the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself. 

- Jay Som’s music has always teetered between genres, blurring their lines in a dreamy haze, even as her music sheds light on her life. Themes such as Asian-American and queer cultural intersectionality, nostalgia and millennial life are all given an effective vehicle in her signature blend of lo-fi indie rock. However, on Anak Ko, “my child” in English, Jay Som is experimenting with the music much more adventurously.

- “Where are the folks like you and I?” The question is posed on the recent single, Velvet Paradise, from the new record by southern duo, Broads. It has hidden depth, multiple meanings and it’s central to what’s going on here. By turns it has elements that are pouting and plaintive, mysterious, menacing, seductive and melancholy. If you were going to try and boil it down to one thing I guess it would be this: Broads questions what it is, in the present day, to be a dangerous woman.

- Braindrops is the second album in as many years from Tropical Fuck Storm and an album that leaps over the mordant bar set by its predecessor. Their sophomore album heightens the energy but does so by being less outwardly jarring. This may simply be a result of the band becoming more familiar, but, hey, I still wouldn't describe what they do as 'easily digestible'.

- It’s fifteen years now since The Hold Steady first sent the music press into fits of delirium. Mixing cheesy classic rock riffs with a short-story writer’s sense of observation and turn of phrase; filling their songs with musical in-jokes; the band seemed made for music nerds and critics.

- On my first listen to the lead single Dig, Bury, Drink from Lagerstein’s forthcoming third album 25/7 I honestly believed that Brisbane had birthed a German bier-hall band; not realising that they were a pirate metal band. After the second spin of the record, and a visit to their website, I would have to say that these buccaneering Brisbanites -with brandished swords- have composed a pirate metal soundtrack. It's so richly theatrical it feels like there should be a whole pirate musical to go with it, even if it doesn't exist yet.