Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – “We're searching for that perfect melody”

How the three guitarists in Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever create an epic, filmic sound

One of the greatest gifts an artist can give their audience is a world to get lost in for a while. It can offer pure escape, or a different perspective, just so long as this painting, book, movie, song, whatever, takes you some place else to see the world or yourself anew. The 21st‑century is forever framed as 360‑degree assault on our attention, and isn’t it just. But, more importantly, what is that doing to our imagination? When you come across a record like Endless Rooms, the third album from the Melbourne‑based indie‑rock quintet Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, it’s like a spa day for the grey matter. Even the cover, a photo of the lakeside cottage where they demoed the album, bright gold of the illuminated interiors framed by obsidian nothingness of the night sky, invites a daydream. There will be more to come.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s sound is constructed of a three-way-guitar conversation conducted between Frank Keaney, Joe White and Tom Russo. All share vocal duties, too. You’ll find Keaney on a Maton cutaway dreadnought acoustic, nicknamed G-Train after Aussie rules footie hero Fraser Gehrig. “Particularly when we started offwe had lots of songs in open G, and this was just this chugger, the G-Train,” Frank laughs. “I love it. I’ve got another one which I call Madame Butterfly, which is named after an Australian Olympic swimmer from the 90s [Susie O’Neill] and is still very muscular but with a little more class.”