Words: James Frostick
Hearts and Rockets band image: Kalindy Williams
Melbourne labels Psychic Hysteria and Roolette Records are teaming up to release a split 7″ (launching as a part of this year’s Brunswick Music Festival) featuring tracks from goth-tinged new-wave two-piece Hearts and Rockets and queer-punk quintet Zig Zag. Both tracks are frustration-laced and immediate, lamenting over suffocating relationships and the lack of financial stability while working as artists.
Life is always better with friends, and the same applies to record releases. Psychic Hysteria and Roolette Records have joined forces to put together a nifty split single featuring two phenomenal Melbourne groups – stylistically different but similar in the fact that they both rock. For this piece, I’m starting with the shorter track of the two – Hearts and Rockets‘ frantic and paranoid post-punk number ‘You Don’t Know What You Have Until You’ve Had Enough’. Here, the duo pick at the scab of past relationships – the ones that started out strong, but became poisoned and toxic over time. It’s a track about needing to break free for one’s own sanity, where nights are spent sleepless and waking moments are imbued with animosity. Even though the song is only two-minutes long, Hearts and Rockets manage to succinctly convey the unhealthy aspects of remaining in a relationship where love has withered and died.
On the record’s flip side, Zig Zag grapple with a different, but similarly relatable sentiment. ‘Crying All The Way To The Bank’ dissects the all-too-familiar struggle of making a living as an artist. With a chugging, jagged and upbeat punk churn as backing, vocalist Kelly Dingeldei wrestles with needing money to live, loathing society’s ingrained ideal that wealth means everything, and how much easier life could be if they compromised – if standards were dropped and morals were cast aside for the sake of making a buck. Safe to say selling out isn’t Zig Zag’s style, but there’s a sense that they’d sure as hell appreciate some better arts funding, even just to make a humble living.
Both Hearts and Rockets and Zig Zag will be launching the record (with support from Shrimpwitch) at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute on Friday March 20 as part of the Brunswick Music Festival. Get your tickets here.
Weirdo Wasteland 