Blank Realm
Blank Realm
Grassed Inn
(Fire Records)
Brisbane's Blank Realm boast a work rate that would terrify most bands. Seven years after their debut long player (and only ten months after the release of well-received predecessor Go Easy), Grassed Inn is album number nine, notwithstanding they are prolific live performers too.
Grassed Inn finds them edging towards the mainstream, albeit all things are relative. It sounds roughly like what Dylan might have accomplished circa 1979 if instead of finding God he had put Television, Neu! and Richard Hell on heavy rotation and hired a space synth maestro to freestyle all over his next record.
Grassed Inn is so ramshackle in places that it might have been recorded in someone's dustbin, but this somehow combines with the constant shifts in style and repetitive choruses to keep demanding attention.
The pace slows to a Lynchian crawl on Bell Tower, where Daniel Spencer drawls about being outside the room of the love interest/victim over sinister tremolo guitars. The showpiece is Bulldozer Love, an aptly described eight-minute krautrock heavy-loader which moves from light-footed low gears through to a frenzy of guitar fuzz and squalling organs. Not to be missed.
Steven Vass
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article