The Naarm emo band GUSH recently released their debut EP, the stars seem closer than you are (nice emo title), on Ngunnawal-based label Gutwrench Records (nice emo label name). For those familiar with Ngunnawal country, they played a show at Kebaba one month ago which is pretty fucking hilarious. Wish I was in-the-know enough to be there. The EP is really promising; GUSH take a pleasingly knotty and unyielding approach to their music, which flits between doomy math-rock and pummelling post-grunge.

‘orbit’ is the one here, though. It’s the work of what should be a far more experienced band than GUSH, one which has reckoned with the gruelling exhaustion of being a touring emo band in Australia long enough for true bitterness to seep into the music. It’s remarkable how complete the song is, tonally and musically. The patient build-up, the sour notes speckled throughout the yearning lead guitar melody, the layered enjambement on the anti-chorus – all of it channels the authentic spirit of Midwest emo. The song is Louis Smith’s strongest lyrical showing on the EP; in the second verse, he imagines being gloriously incapacitated: “The gift of eating from your hand / my mammal brain dilutes, expands”. Then the instrumental begins to chug and the guitars start to wail. The anti-chorus returns one more time, this time as a proper chorus, before GUSH launch into a furious loud-quiet-loud climax, one of the most liberating musical passages I’ve heard from an Australian act all year. Suddenly, it all drops away into a minute-long, spellbinding piano coda that wouldn’t be out of place on a new-gen Black Country, New Road record. It’s absolutely wonderful. Such a beautiful, dynamic, unexpected song. Thanks GUSH. Keep ‘em coming.

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Sam Gollings

15 October 2024