Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Sideways to New Italy

Indies only 'Loser' Edition' - Sub Pop 'First Run Colored Vinyl' Blue Vinyl. (SP1360X)

After years spent looking out at landscapes and loved ones and an
increasingly unstable world, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have turned
their gaze inward, to their individual pasts and the places that inform them,
on their second full-length, Sideways to New Italy.

 Led by singer-songwriter-guitarists Tom Russo, Joe White and Fran Keaney,
the guitar-pop five-piece returned home to Australia after the relentless
touring schedule that came following their critically regarded 2018 debut
Hope Downs. Feeling the literal and metaphorical ground under their feet
had shifted, the band began grasping for something reliable. For Keaney,
that translated into writing "pure romantic fiction" and consciously avoiding
the temptation of angsty break-up songs, while Russo looked north to a
"bizarre place" that captured the feeling of manufacturing a sense of home
when his own had disappeared.

 The New Italy of the new album’s title is a village near New South Wales’
Northern Rivers – the area drummer Marcel Tussie is from. A blink-andyou'll-miss-it pit-stop of a place with fewer than 200 residents, it was
founded by Venetian immigrants in the late-1800s and now serves as
something of a living monument to Italians' contribution to Australia, with
replica Roman statues dotted like alien souvenirs on the otherwise rural
landscape. The parallels to the way the band attempted to maintain
connections and create familiarity during their disorienting time on the road
was apparent to Russo. "These are the expressions of people trying to find a
home somewhere alien: trying to create a utopia in a turbulent and
imperfect world." The record's geographic identity emerged from the band
losing their grip on their own, whether that was through the pressure of
touring, the dissolution of relationships, a frustrating distance from their
daily lives – or some combination of all three – that came from being
slingshotted all over the world, playing sold-out headline tours and festivals
including Coachella, Governors Ball, Primavera Sound, All Points East, and
Pitchfork Music Festival. The notion of crafting, in Russo’s words, “a utopia
of where your heart’s from,” permeates Sideways to New Italy, in which
early attempts at writing big, high-concept songs about The State of the
World were abandoned in favor of love songs, and familiar voices and
characters filter in and out, grounding the band's stories in their personal
histories. There’s something comforting, too, in knowing the next time
they’re buffeted from stage to stage around the world, they’ll be taking the
voices of their loved ones with them, building a new totem of home no
matter where they end up.

Tracklisting - The Second Of The First
Falling Thunder
She's There
Beautiful Steven
The Only One
Cars In Space
Cameo
Not Tonight
Sunglasses At The
Wedding
The Cool Change