INTERSTELLAR GATOR RELEASES SELF TITLED ALBUM
Coming out of Melbourne’s indie rock scene, Interstellar Gator have risen from their warehouse behind St Kilda’s Inkerman hotel to provide an in-your-face album of tracks that are sure to excite Melbourne audiences. Laden with heavy guitar solos and strong lyrical direction, the band has opened their careers with an impressive selection of tracks that point towards a bright future for the band.
Although sometimes too consistent with structure, the band have diversified this LP with enough style and confidence to make the full track list worth listening too. With influences including Mac DeMarco and most notably The Arctic Monkeys, there is a lot to appreciate from this release as the band set out to emulate their success.
Instrumentally, the band has a great foundation to build from as the strings section carries the whole album with great panache and diversity. Changing from psychedelic distortion to heavy rock inspired power chords, the album is covered in solos that demonstrate great talent and direction from the guitar section.
Lyrically, the album is filled with sweet melodies and introspective lyrics, often revolving around a love interest. Most importantly, there’s is a quality in how they have added a bit of their own unique quirkiness to what can be an oversaturated indie rock category. Songs like ‘All Alone’ and ‘Dreams Come True’ contain melodies that are often filled with playful rhymes or blunt sarcasm such as, “you wouldn’t catch me eating banana bread with your mother.” This is inspired by the obvious source of inspiration from acts like Mac Demarco.
With an instrumental track filled with Dad jokes and thanks to “all those delicious morsels out there,” the album shows the band’s playfulness whilst building a great connection with their fans.
Throughout this album, there were moments where the lyrics can be strained by a vocal performance that is mostly great but can be caught out by a difficulty in reaching higher pitches or being left alone by softer instruments. Songs that are stripped down such as ‘Soul Mind Heart’ demonstrate how this change of pace to a mid-western emo style guitar section with light drum fills can leave the vocal performance a bit stranded in brief moments. This is not to diminish the great performance overall from the band vocally most notably from the track ‘Rude’ an ode to songs like ‘Arabella’ there is great confidence to this track that shows how strong the band can be vocally.
Structurally, the band demonstrate a lot of similarities track to track with gradual build ups that lead to heavy guitar chords and solos. The album’s structure in itself is what is most impressive, opening with songs such as ‘Are You Down,’ ‘Green Girl’ and ‘Windsor,’ the band’s exciting and unbridled energy is essential to an album such as theirs.
Like “a loaded weapon from a centrefold,” Interstellar Gator assaults your ears with drum fills and flanger-pedalled indie rock that leaves you wanting more. The gradual slow down of the track list is a smart move from the band with songs such as ‘All Alone’ and ‘Dreams Come True,’ are needed to demonstrate the band’s ability to change it up and connect differently to an audience.
With the LP ending with ‘Dependant,’ a favourite of the track list, there is a amalgamation of everything the band has learnt along they way, going out with a bang that acknowledges the strengths of every part of the album.
A great introduction to a band with a bright future, Interstellar Gator demonstrates on this first album that they have the tools to take on the Aussie indie rock scene.
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