What do you do when the surf isn’t calling your name? If you’re the Wollongong duo Hockey Dad, you get together and make some music. Zach Stephenson and Billy Fleming – musical partners and lifelong friends – started out jamming in a family garage. Now they’ve found a legion of international fans, playing everywhere from Reading to the Bowery.
On first glance you’d be forgiven for mistaking Hockey Dad for the hundreds of other laddish outfits prefabbed for Triple J success. But I’ve always had a soft spot: their music is boisterous without being boorish, reminiscent of your favourite summer days (without the associated sunburn). Their 2016 debut album Boronia brims with charming chemistry and tributes to formative influences including 60s garage bands and 90s punk acts.
It made them a snug fit in the Australian music scene but jump forward to 2018’s Blend Inn and you can already hear something sharper and punchier in Stephenson’s guitar work; there’s a greater longing and depth to his vocals, too. Call it surf rock for dicey conditions.
Then came 2020’s Brain Candy, which – despite its release year – held little nihilism or despair, even with the clairvoyant track Germaphobe, written pre-Covid. At a drive-in gig in October that year, hundreds of cars filled the Bulli Showground. “Walking past the cars is like seeing the equivalent of the twist and fizz of a tinnie being opened,” wrote a Guardian Australia reviewer at the time. The same could be said of the album itself: largely frenetic, with buzzsaw guitars and thumping percussion evoking – though never imitating – elements of Nirvana.
On all three of these previous albums, the band galloped along, barely giving the listener a moment to catch their breath. By comparison, their new album Rebuild Repeat feels like interval training: whiz-bang sprints placed next to slow burns.
The album leans into the size of the rooms they’re now playing: it’s filled with indie-rock stadium anthems, including the jovial opener Base Camp, which would prove a worthy soundtrack to a scary and new pursuit. The heartfelt That’s on You is another standout, and is ripe for a crowd singalong, arm wrapped around a friend. Quieter tracks such as Burning Sand fit comfortably amid the extravaganza, while the piano-led closer Dancing on the Other Hand soars and swells, completing the band’s decade-long transformation from feisty grommets to bona fide stars.
It’s a big swing, but you don’t land knockout punches by continually clinching.
For more: Hockey Dad’s new album Rebuild Repeat is out now. Their Australian tour begins in Perth on 21 June, before shows in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
This month Guardian Australia also listened to …
Doris – Four Trees (7 June)
Don’t call them shoegaze: when this Newcastle five-piece turn to survey the firmament, they sound positively infernal. With just a flick of the eyes, their debut album transforms ground-dwelling mumblings into arms-outstretched howls: catharsis by way of noise.
June Jones – Proximity (7 June)
After experimenting with the lure of pure pop on singles Good Girl and Bubblegum, June Jones leans in hard with her new EP: six plastic-fantastic bagatelles where the BPM banishes all woes and partying is a panacea.
Dobby – Warrangu: River Story (14 June)
A beautiful, radically community-minded album from the Murrawarri-Filipino rapper and drummer (or “drapper”), all about water theft in the Murray-Darling Basin. Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya, with a sample of a pied butcherbird’s call, is a standout track.
Hiatus Kaiyote – Love Heart Cheat Code (14 June)
More swirling eclecticism from Melbourne’s pioneering, long-running jazz collective.
Pond – Stung! (21 June)
The new release from Tame Impala’s better half (sorry not sorry) is spacey and sun-drunk, spiralling upwards towards the wild blue yonder. So: more of the same – but who cares when it sounds this good?
