But now, with their self-titled debut album, there might just be a little bit of growing up going on. It’s definitely the biggest-sounding recording Twerps have ever done. Unlike their early manifestos, Twerps was recorded in a bona fide studio, with the help of engineer Jack Farley (Beaches, St Helens).

But it’s not just the sound, it’s the songs. Tracks like Through The Day and first single Dreamin contain instantly recognisably Twerps elements: the fascination with New Zealand’s 1980s Flying Nun era, as well as US bands like the Feelies and Galaxie 500. But they also contain a kind of Australian pop timelessness that harks back to the Go-Betweens, Paul Kelly and the Sunnyboys. This is something new for the band, and it’s deep and resonant.

Co-release label Underwater Peoples was recently listed as one of the “50 best indie labels in America” by Billboard Magazine, and is home to releases by the likes of Real Estate and Mountain Man. The album follows a 2009 EP for Chapter, plus subsequent singles on Underwater Peoples and New York label Group Tightener, and a cassette for Iowa label Night People.

New Start Again, the debut album by Melbourne foursome Dick Diver, is warm and understated, shot through with casual grace and supported by real backbone. It’s an intriguing combination of widescreen Australian sweep, 70s New York edge and 90s indie-rock scratch that transcends its influences to become truly honest and exciting.

The respectively wry and poetic songwriting of guitarists Rupert Edwards and Alistair McKay lobs Dick Diver up alongside Go-Betweens heroes Forster & McLennan, while their often epic fretwork bears echoes of Television and Yo La Tengo.

But bassist Al Montfort’s impeccable punk pedigree (UV Race, Total Control, Straightjacket) roughs up the band’s bookish proclivities, while drummer Steph Hughes brings a similarly frayed-edge appeal. Her background in bands from Children Collide to Boomgates gives the band an offhand, subtly swinging charm.

Their first EP, 2009’s Arks Up, enjoyed Triple J rotation and community radio thrashing, and brought shows with Stephen Malkmus and a Boogie Festival appearance, amongst other plaudits.

Rupert and Al Mc hogged the songwriting duties on the EP, but New Start Again, recorded with Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s Mikey Young at an old homestead in country Victoria, is a much more even-handed affair. The band share songwritng, swap instruments, and introduce new sounds like pedal steel, piano, and slide guitar. Steph and Al Monty’s title-track duet, especially, provides a laidback, cheeky counterpointo their bandmates’ more considered efforts.

Rupert, meanwhile, provides lovelorn-but-snappy first single Through the D and sook-pop classic On the Bank, while Al Mc displays impressionistic lyrical flair on tracks like Hammock Daysand Seagulls. And on closing trackHead Back, the four loosen their collars to create probably the funnest five minutes of music released in Australia this year.

New Start Again, the debut album by Melbourne foursome Dick Diver, is warm and understated, shot through with casual grace and supported by real backbone. It’s an intriguing combination of widescreen Australian sweep, 70s New York edge and 90s indie-rock scratch that transcends its influences to become truly honest and exciting.

The respectively wry and poetic songwriting of guitarists Rupert Edwards and Alistair McKay lobs Dick Diver up alongside Go-Betweens heroes Forster & McLennan, while their often epic fretwork bears echoes of Television and Yo La Tengo.

But bassist Al Montfort’s impeccable punk pedigree (UV Race, Total Control, Straightjacket) roughs up the band’s bookish proclivities, while drummer Steph Hughes brings a similarly frayed-edge appeal. Her background in bands from Children Collide to Boomgates gives the band an offhand, subtly swinging charm.

Their first EP, 2009’s Arks Up, enjoyed Triple J rotation and community radio thrashing, and brought shows with Stephen Malkmus and a Boogie Festival appearance, amongst other plaudits.

Rupert and Al Mc hogged the songwriting duties on the EP, but New Start Again, recorded with Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s Mikey Young at an old homestead in country Victoria, is a much more even-handed affair. The band share songwritng, swap instruments, and introduce new sounds like pedal steel, piano, and slide guitar. Steph and Al Monty’s title-track duet, especially, provides a laidback, cheeky counterpointo their bandmates’ more considered efforts.

Rupert, meanwhile, provides lovelorn-but-snappy first single Through the D and sook-pop classic On the Bank, while Al Mc displays impressionistic lyrical flair on tracks like Hammock Days and Seagulls. And on closing track Head Back, the four loosen their collars to create probably the funnest five minutes of music released in Australia this year.

But now, with their self-titled debut album, there might just be a little bit of growing up going on. It’s definitely the biggest-sounding recording Twerps have ever done. Unlike their early manifestos, Twerps was recorded in a bona fide studio, with the help of engineer Jack Farley (Beaches, St Helens).

But it’s not just the sound, it’s the songs. Tracks like Through The Day and first single Dreamin contain instantly recognisably Twerps elements: the fascination with New Zealand’s 1980s Flying Nun era, as well as US bands like the Feelies and Galaxie 500. But they also contain a kind of Australian pop timelessness that harks back to the Go-Betweens, Paul Kelly and the Sunnyboys. This is something new for the band, and it’s deep and resonant.

Co-release label Underwater Peoples was recently listed as one of the “50 best indie labels in America” by Billboard Magazine, and is home to releases by the likes of Real Estate and Mountain Man. The album follows a 2009 EP for Chapter, plus subsequent singles on Underwater Peoples and New York label Group Tightener, and a cassette for Iowa label Night People.

Vanity Is Forever is Crayon Fields frontman Geoffrey O’Connor’s first album under his own name, and his most ambitious, dynamic and sophisticated work yet.

O’Connor’s fractured romantic reflections and lustful tributes play out over vast synthscapes, colossal stadium drums and flanged orchestral sweeps, creating a world that is at once ethereal and strikingly vivid.

With a combination of restraint and fearless abandon, O’Connor embraces the conflicts of modern love in a manner as ambiguous as it is blunt, and as shameless as it is generous. His songs indulge in ecstasy, love, pride, failure and all the glamorous contradictions they become. He is both an adult with a juvenile mind, and a geriatric in the body of a young man.

Painstakingly refined over two years, Vanity Is Forever is O’Connor’s most fully-realised album to date, an epic pop melodrama that shifts seamlessly between seductive high-production dance hits, suave funk joyrides and modern synthetic power balladry.

Recently, O’Connor has mesmerised audiences with an extravagant live show of dueling synthesizers, lazers, light sculptures and hypnotic projections. His diverse solo output – under both his own name and previous solo moniker Sly Hats – has seen him handpicked to support a the likes of Fleet Foxes, Jens Lekman, School Of Seven Bells, Andrew Bird and First Aid Kit.

Vanity Is Forever is Crayon Fields frontman Geoffrey O’Connor’s first album under his own name, and his most ambitious, dynamic and sophisticated work yet.

O’Connor’s fractured romantic reflections and lustful tributes play out over vast synthscapes, colossal stadium drums and flanged orchestral sweeps, creating a world that is at once ethereal and strikingly vivid.

With a combination of restraint and fearless abandon, O’Connor embraces the conflicts of modern love in a manner as ambiguous as it is blunt, and as shameless as it is generous. His songs indulge in ecstasy, love, pride, failure and all the glamorous contradictions they become. He is both an adult with a juvenile mind, and a geriatric in the body of a young man.

Painstakingly refined over two years, Vanity Is Forever is O’Connor’s most fully-realised album to date, an epic pop melodrama that shifts seamlessly between seductive high-production dance hits, suave funk joyrides and modern synthetic power balladry.

Recently, O’Connor has mesmerised audiences with an extravagant live show of dueling synthesizers, lazers, light sculptures and hypnotic projections. His diverse solo output – under both his own name and previous solo moniker Sly Hats – has seen him handpicked to support a the likes of Fleet Foxes, Jens Lekman, School Of Seven Bells, Andrew Bird and First Aid Kit.

LIMITED OFFER – Australian customers who buy this CD also get a free copy of Geoffrey’s 2007 album Liquorice Night (released under the name Sly Hats)!

Vanity Is Forever is Crayon Fields frontman Geoffrey O’Connor’s first album under his own name, and his most ambitious, dynamic and sophisticated work yet.

O’Connor’s fractured romantic reflections and lustful tributes play out over vast synthscapes, colossal stadium drums and flanged orchestral sweeps, creating a world that is at once ethereal and strikingly vivid.

With a combination of restraint and fearless abandon, O’Connor embraces the conflicts of modern love in a manner as ambiguous as it is blunt, and as shameless as it is generous. His songs indulge in ecstasy, love, pride, failure and all the glamorous contradictions they become. He is both an adult with a juvenile mind, and a geriatric in the body of a young man.

Painstakingly refined over two years, Vanity Is Forever is O’Connor’s most fully-realised album to date, an epic pop melodrama that shifts seamlessly between seductive high-production dance hits, suave funk joyrides and modern synthetic power balladry.

Recently, O’Connor has mesmerised audiences with an extravagant live show of dueling synthesizers, lazers, light sculptures and hypnotic projections. His diverse solo output – under both his own name and previous solo moniker Sly Hats – has seen him handpicked to support a the likes of Fleet Foxes, Jens Lekman, School Of Seven Bells, Andrew Bird and First Aid Kit.

The man about whom the Go-Betweens sang Don’t Let Him Come Back…is back! Revered pop romantic Peter Milton Walsh and his band The Apartments return with their first new recordings since 1998. The resigned beauty of Black Ribbons, presented here in two distinct versions, is the first evidence of a newly invigorated Walsh, who has been the sole constant in The Apartments since the band formed in Brisbane in 1978.

Side A’s “Spring mix” was recorded as a duet with Natasha Penot, vocalist for Parisian electro-pop group Grisbi, reflecting the fact that to this day The Apartments remain a revered cult in France. The flip side’s “Autumn mix” is darker and more brooding, recorded with former Go-Between John Willsteed in the producer’s chair. Both versions illustrate the richness and emotional weight that more than three decades of songwriting can produce.

After a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spell in The Go-Betweens (that still inspired both Don‘t Let Him Come Back andBefore Hollywood track That Way), Walsh released debut EP The Return Of the Hypnotist in 1979, by which time the original incarnation of the Apartments had already split.

He then headed to New York for a couple of years, moving to London in 1983 to play bass for the Laughing Clowns just long enough to tour the world with the band and record their second album Law Of Nature in 1984.

Walsh then got together a new Apartments, releasing  second single All You Wanted which resulted in them being signed to esteemed UK label Rough Trade. Finally, The Apartments’ debut album The Evening Visits…And Stays For Years, recorded in London with the help of members of Orange Juice, Everything But the Girl and The Triffids, was released on Rough Trade records in 1985.

The Evening Visits is a classic of grand, literate and incisively emotional pop. Signature tune Mr. Somewhere was covered by 4AD supergroup This Mortal Coil, and the band found themselves lauded in Europe, where they began touring. The Shyest Time single followed in 1988, lifted from the Some Kind Of Wonderful soundtrack to promote the movie by teen-flick auteur John Hughes.

After a decade’s absence, Walsh returned to Australia, forming a new Apartments and releasing a series of acclaimed albums, including Drift (1993), A Life Full Of Farewells (1995), Apart (1997) and Fête Foraine (1998).

Due to Walsh’s increasingly reclusive nature The Apartments career was marked more by silence and disappearances than the usual band routines. Yet, Walsh was lured out of musical retirement in 2007 to play the first live Apartments shows in Australia since he had long ago left the country for Europe. Later alerted to interest shown by fans via La Blogothèque, the legendary French music blog, Walsh took a version of The Apartments to France in the Autumn of 2009. There he played a handful of rapturously received dates, including a sold-out show in Paris and other French cities.

Recently, the Apartments have also been championed by a new generation of US pop lovers, featured on recent mixes and playlists from the lo-fi likes of Blank Dogs and Big Troubles.

Suitably reinspired, Peter is now at work on a new Apartments album, with Black Ribbons a tantalising first glimpse of riches to come.