- Brick Brick is Heidi Cutlack’s (Bent, Scaredy Snake) new leg, backed by Matt Kennedy (Kitchen's Floor, Sorry Golden State) on the drums and pot (the one he uses for his pasta) and Phoebe BMX (Kitchen’s Floor, CDIQ) on bass. It’s a lot less angular and wiry than seminal Brisbane’s Bent stuff, it’s soft rock with a heavy mood of "ennui" (that’s French for “Brisborndom”).
Heidi is now based in Japan, when I asked her about Brisbane last year in Soot Zine II she said, “Brisbane is the dust that settles on all your things when you don't use them for a long time and then you inhale the dust when you eventually move your things and when you breathe it in you get a strange condition that makes you really peculiar and interesting and insular and sad, but really cool.”
Chip 4 Chip feels like a homage to that insularity of Brisbane. It captures the disillusionment of what it’s like to live in, know, and love people in a sometimes suffocating, conservative QLD. Her lyrics feel like you walked in on her playing guitar in her bedroom after a house show, which is a tired description but a necessary evil of anyone rock inclined and a bit sad. It’s a hopeless and personal tape: Heidi’s jaded and either under a thumb or the thumb itself.
Secret Problem uses the same guitar riff and structure as Above Ground Pool’s Black Cardy, which is a really special perpetuation of Brisbane’s late Bek Moore (Clag, Above Ground Pool, Scrabbled, Gus). This lends itself to Chip 4 Chip’s feeling of looking back— on Brisbane’s history, Heidi’s own personal history, etc.
It’s straighter than Bent, but it’s still undeniably Heidi. The dust has settled, but it might actually be magic dust, or grey glitter or something. As on the Eternal Soundcheck Bandcamp, “Total Brisbane, total brick rock.”
- Tia Wolf.