A band name can provide many cues to the music beneath. With “Big Dead”, this might conjure up a languid artistic bent yet more than a hint of pomp and menace; but playing loose with signifiers can only get you so far. This Brisbane five piece bring a kind of world-weary abandon to their particular brand of jazz-infused rock. Think Radiohead at their most unnerved and you’re some of the way there. But this would short change the band’s divergent makeup; this is music which smooths as many feathers as it rustles. Their eponymous record Eudaemonia runs an addled path through jazz and rock experimentalism, recalling the sprawling reveries of Spiritualized and the skittering polyrythmic manoeuvres of Jaga Jazzist. In equal measure Big Dead’s music evokes that sombre, heavy-lidded romantic postlude – mementos more sedated slow burn than agitated recollection, subdued sax trading coyly with soporific drums, anchored in words of enigmatic reflection. At the next turn freewheeling anthemic numbers eschew this sentimentality, favouring a firebrand demolition of everything that has hitherto been so carefully crafted. It is here that Big Dead’s music unfurls to a core that is uniquely delicate and at the same time drenched in a kind of protracted faze that only the most crushing loss can bring. At the heart of Big Dead is a take-no-prisoners musical ambition, eager to hurl the listener from chaos through to catharsis. Their latest single “Tide/Microscopic” is out in April 2022.While touring extensively on the east coast of Australia, they have played alongside bands such as Tortoise (CAN) Knower (US) The Paper Kites (AU) and have appeared at festivals such as Jungle Love Festival, Dots and Loops, Against The Grain, Kennedy’s Creek Festival, Kaleidoscope Festival and Deadlam.

Big Dead is: Cam Bower (guitar, vocals, producer) Joshua Dunn (guitar, vocals) Nathan MacGregor (drums) Lachlan Kidd (bass clarinet, co-producer) Lee Brackenborough (keyboards)