- There was a time when Darren Hanlon was a mainstream figure in Australian music. In the mid 2000’s, his songs full of puns and wry observations were regularly on high rotation on triple J and played from the stages of large venues and festivals.

That really seems like another era now – a time when pop culture seemed a bit more self-aware and less serious; and when white men with guitars (even novel parlour guitars like Darren’s) dominated Australian music.

<p><span><span>- Drug Church<strong> </strong>have added another perspective to their mordant world view. The band's well-trodden, abstract, scumbag soliloquies are slowly being eroded. In place of the low-life-lustre, we’re now starting to see less narrative allusions and more pertinent questions to mull over thanks to a more earnest level of pondering and reflection. </span></span></p>

- Kat Hunter’s prog-pop project Lack The Low returns with her second EP after 2018’s stacked One Eye Closed. Again it finds an utterly appropriate home on the label for serious-musicians-with-serious-music-to-get-out-there, Art As Catharsis. The new record seems both sweeter, leaning into its pop sensibilities, yet, perhaps even more densely compressed, every song stuffed with so much complex orchestration. Lack The Low has a roiling energy that’s always adding more, like she’s on some breathless pursuit of artistic perfection.

- Benny the Butcher’s Tana Talk series has returned in its fourth iteration; the first in over three years. While I’ve become less interested in the Griselda collective due to oversaturation, Tana Talk 4 piqued my interest as the previous instalment was what originally put me on to the New York rapper. Like Tana Talk 3, 4 is primarily produced by The Alchemist and Daringer who provide hard-hitting, gritty production, typical of the coke-rap sub-genre.