This is a pretty sweet clip for the new East Link song ‘Spring Street’, directed by Johann Rashid (Autonomy & Deliberation). The Melbourne group, which features a bunch of guys from other Melbourne groups (Total Control, Repairs, Lakes and more), so far have a tape released via Creep Dreams, but there’s a 7 inch forthcoming on Aarght! as well as an LP.
I didn’t like ‘Spring Street’ the first time I listened, but the clip is entrancing enough to merit a re-watch, and with the second viewing I came around to the song. There’s a lot of sneering and reprobate guitar music in Australia at the moment, some of it not good. But with East Link, during ‘Spring Street’ at least, Al Montfort’s vocals remind me of Brett Sprague pep-talking his shithead younger brothers.
This band, with its references to Ansett, Spring Street (the home of Victorian bureaucracy) and the Melbourne M3, remind me of Perth’s Mining Boom, in particular their track ‘Telecom’. Dead, dying or indelibly changed icons of Australian civic progress.