Australian Animal Friends

As a regular of the Australian singer/songwriter circuit and with a handful of solo singles under her belt, Melbourne native Georgia Maq decided to bring together Kelly Hellmrich on bass and Sarah Thompson on drums to flesh out her solo project. With Camp Cope's angst-ridden sound sitting between the confessional folk-punk of fellow Melbourner Wil Wagner and the lo-fi pop-punk of Alabama's P.S. Eliot, the band secured themselves support slots with the likes of the Hotelier, Andrew Jackson Jihad, and Waxahatchee, as well as playing their own headline shows. Wasting no time, the trio entered the studio and by the end of the year had recorded their debut album with Sam Johnson (the Smith Street Band, the Bennies). Released on Poison City in April 2016, their eight-track self-titled debut earned them critical acclaim for its confessional storytelling while also entering the ARIA albums chart at number 36. After a successful joint tour of Australia at the end of 2016 with Philadelphia's Cayetana, Poison City issued a limited split single that featured new material by both bands.

Ask anyone around the Austin-San Marcos-San Antonio area who’s in the know in their scene, and whether they like it or not, they’ll probably tell you psychedelic rock. In the last few years, bands like The Halfways and the Roaring Sun have cropped up with a new brand of Texas neo-psychedelia. This movement, as far as this reviewer can tell, seems to be due to the pervasiveness at the moment of neo-psych music in indie-rock in general. With Australian bands like Tame Impala, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Pond, as well as American bands like Thee Oh Sees and The Black Angels all coming into prominence in the last ten years, we should have seen this coming.