Album Review Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Endless Rooms

Jangling Aussies Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever face a familiar challenge on ‘Endless Rooms’. After a formula-establishing debut and the tour tales follow up, can they keep listeners engaged without resorting to a recipe that could quickly become stale? They opt to take on this challenge with an “anti-concept album”. In practice, it means the album is like an advent calendar: instead of a chalky chocolate behind each door, you get one of the titular ‘Rooms’; a self-contained song chronicling their discontent with their homeland. The topics covered range from the destruction of reefs on ‘Tidal River’ to bushfires on ‘Bouncing off the Bottom’. The former drives with a bass-led, post-punk energy accented with improvised guitar interjections while highlight ‘Blue Eye Lake’ thrums with a groove reminiscent of the Stone Roses. Make no mistake, the tried and true formula still remains (‘The Way it Shatters’ and ‘Saw You at Eastern Beach’ will be instant earworms for established fans) but the sound is now broadened with new accents to keep things fresh. While ‘Endless Rooms’ chronicles a darker period in RBCF’s time as a band, it’s an album that paves a sonically brighter and broader future ahead.