Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have shared new song ‘Tidal River’, lifted from their forthcoming album ‘Endless Rooms’.
The song takes sharp aim at the ignorance and self-entitlement present within Australian culture, the hoarding of wealth by the country’s elite and the slow pace of progress. It’s “a little snapshot of living in a place at a time when it feels like there is no-one at the wheel”, according to the band’s Tom Russo.
“If there were a complacency Olympics, Australia would win gold by a mile. In the ‘lucky country’, the luckiest ones jealously guard their fortune, as if it will disappear if they share it around. There is so much potential to do better, but it sometimes seems like progress is two steps forward, two steps back,” he elaborates.
“Tidal River is located in what Europeans named Wilsons Promontory, where the river meets the ocean. It has great significance for the Gunai/Kurnai and Boonwurrung peoples, who call it Yiruk and Wamoon respectively. No matter the struggles and politics that go on, the river keeps churning into the sea.”
‘Tidal River’ arrives alongside a video directed by Nick Mckk that intersperses landscape footage on the lands of the Gunai/Kurnai and Boonwurrung peoples with shots of the band playing. Watch that below:
‘Tidal River’ is the second song to be shared from new album ‘Endless Rooms’, which is slated to arrive on May 6 via Ivy League Records in Australia. The band announced the follow-up to 2020’s ‘Sideways to New Italy’ last month alongside lead single ‘The Way It Shatters’.
In a four-star review of ‘Sideways To New Italy’, NME’s Rhys Buchanan said the record “might sound like sun-splashed indie for good times, but there’s a great deal of angst buried within. Yet this is clearly also the sound of a band excited to be in the studio together; warmth and friendship seeps through every note.”
Last month, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever announced rescheduled Australian tour dates for 2022. The band will play the Forum in Melbourne later this month, with shows in Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Hobart booked for April.