Locust Revival: Partially Here | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Within the Australian Gothic landscape of dark, endless plains, Partially Here, the new album from formerly Brisbane and now Melbourne based post-punk prodigy Locust Revival, emerges mirage-like as a still-life of fruits & flowers; a vanitas whose dark beauty reminds us of the importance & impermanence of life's most coveted delicacies; love & happiness. 
Partially Here, released May 22nd, is an album riddled with a deep contemplation of the themes of duality -life and death, happiness and hopelessness, love and self-loathing- and as noted by the multi-instrumentalist behind the project, Steven Schnorrer, the spectral sense of being in two places at once, whilst not really being anywhere at all.

Such esoteric and emotive thoughts are both unsurprising to those who know Schnorrer personally and perfectly captured in the album's concise reconciliation of early the '80's post- punk and contemporary darkwave. Celebrating the best of both of these genres, Locust Revival delivers an album that is exactly that: caught between two worlds and therefore not really existing fully in either; and while it exists in the ether between, Partially Here is intimately bound to the realms of disappointment, grief and entrapment.

Despite the universality of the emotional tropes explored throughout an album which leans heavily into post-punk hallmarks, it is an incredibly refreshing release in a genre which has of late fallen prey to the trap of heavily recycled synth patches, overused drum samples & paint-by-numbers song structure. 
There's a bricolage of influence writhing around in here. There's the bite of Rowland S Howards’ crying jag, the cold, club cymbals & synths of Boy Harsher & SRSQ, the jangle and crash of the The Chameleons, the ethereal, oceanic guitar of Robin Guthrie, the avant-pop pageantry of Tears for Fears and the dancefloor prowl of The Sisters of Mercy: a most wonderfully gothic concoction. Most unmistakably however is the influence, or perhaps the idolisation of one of the genre's most prolific bassists, The Cure's Simon Gallup. Schnorror has admitted this album was a vehicle to explore and experiment with Pornography and Faith era bass lines, which snake throughout the album and commandeer the tracks, constricting each glimmering hook and moody melody before devouring them whole. From the album's opener and title track to its epic, six minute closer, Partially There, Schnorrers’ serpentine bass lines entrance in a way not felt since Nylex’s Dee Drive delivered the best bass lines in Australian post-punk history on their 2018 self-titled release.

A palpable & articulate apathy is present too as it often is in music made by white male musicians. The intimate knowledge of the anxious malaise brought on by the uncomfortable union of privilege and guilt reveals itself as the album unfolds as a slow burn, self-defeatist soliloquy. The mournful, slightly bitter, but ever romantic bite to Locust Revival's latest offering is a love language many of us are familiar with. Lyrics which predict the futility of joy hanging like hymns of nihilistic acceptance in the cathedral which is Locust Revivals’ lovelorn & delightfully depressing discography. Heartache and the pain of acceptance are poignantly unifying experiences for many of us and Partially Here is an album which, like the ripe figs in still life paintings, honours these temporal feelings but tempts you to you to forget them if only for a moment.

- Dominique Furphy.
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