Last year’s first New Centre compilation was a simple proposition: 18 mostly garage bands, split between Geelong and Melbourne. True to the title, a showcase of a swelling musical hotspot in Victoria. This second volume keeps the same dodgy and eroded spirit that made the first sound so perfect on cassette, but widens the net to include more states and cities. And while garage is still key, so too is punk, post-punk, psych, surf and bedroom pop.
So what unites these 20 tracks? A persistent rawness, for one, as well as a lively awareness of the past and a fondness for brevity that makes the total running time just 53 minutes. All the songs were recorded last year or in 2011, except for…
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…a Straight Arrows demo from way back in 2007. But primarily it’s a shared spirit that allows the vocal sweetness of Super Wild Horses’ ‘Some Things I Can’t Do Without You’ to make sense next to Bits of Shit’s barked and slurred ‘F’ (recorded live at Brunswick’s The Penny Black) and that Straight Arrows demo ‘Running Wild’, which stays just as robustly in-the-red as their “proper” songs. — messandnoise
1. Raw Prawn – Stitched Me Up [02:08]
2. The Otchkies – Exiled On Highway Seven [02:51]
3. The Stevens – Elpho Beach [02:26]
4. Terrible Truths – Diamond [01:23]
5. The Towelheads – Hijacked [02:55]
6. The Nugs – I’m Spending the Night [02:18]
7. The Sulphur Lights – Kill Everyone [02:50]
8. Straight Arrows – Running Wild (Demo) [02:14]
9. Anti Fade – Some Things I Can’t Do Without You [01:54]
10. Bits of Shit – F (Live) [03:22]
11. Tiny Migrants – Talk Shit [01:41]
12. Wonderboy – Some Kinda Love [02:43]
13. Cobwebbs – Twenty Twelve [03:21]
14. Housewives – You’s Hate [01:52]
15. The Gooch Palms – A Sun, a Moon [03:11]
16. Turtlenecjk – The Same [03:08]
17. Leather Towel – Food Poisoning [00:53]
18. Sewers – General Gore [02:42]
19. The Fighting League – Bad Surprises [03:20]
20. Counsellor of Aging – Gift Horse in the Mouth [05:26]