Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever National Tour
Just days away from the release of their highly-anticipated debut album Hope Downs – out Friday 15 June via Ivy League Records – Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have announced their biggest headline tour to date. The huge Hope Downs World Tour will see the Melbourne outfit traverse the globe across four months, playing to fans in Australia, the USA, Canada, the UK and Europe, and will include sets at Lowlands (Netherlands), Pukklepop (Belgium) and Green Man (UK), with more to be announced.
In celebration of the news, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have dropped a surprise cut from their album in the form of closing track, The Hammer, which follows stellar songs Mainland, Talking Straight and An Air Conditioned Man.
The band will kick off the Australian leg of their world tour at Brisbane Festival on Thursday 27 September before playing to fans in Sydney, Wollongong, Perth, Adelaide and Geelong, finishing in their hometown of Melbourne on Saturday 13 October at the Corner Hotel. The tour will be the band’s first Australian shows since their sold-out Mainland Tour in April. Tickets for the Australian shows are on sale now. With sell out shows across their last tour, fans should act quickly to avoid disappointment.
It’s been an incredibly busy few months for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. Between taking out the coveted Levi’s Music Prize and being announced on this year’s Splendour in the Grass, the five-piece have filled their time touring across North America, the UK and Europe, playing sold out headline shows and performances at some of the world’s biggest music festivals including Coachella, The Great Escape, Primavera, Shaky Knees and more.
Current single Talking Straight marks the second release of new music from the band for 2018 and is currently on rotation across the likes of triple j, Double J, FBi Radio and BBC 6 Music, as well as spins across BBC Radio 1, Triple R, 4ZZZ and more. Previous single Mainland saw the band receive accolades from the likes of Pitchfork, Stereogum and DIY Mag, as well as high rotation from triple j and community radio alike.
Their debut album Hope Downs was largely written over the past year in the band’s Melbourne rehearsal room, where their previous releases were also written and recorded. The core trio of songwriters – Fran Keaney, Joe White and Tom Russo – bunkered down and wrote as the chaos of the world outside unavoidably seeped into the songwriting process.
“We felt like we were in a moment where the sands were shifting and the world was getting a lot weirder. There was a general sense that things were coming apart at the seams and people around us were too,” Russo explains. “The songs on this album are like a collection of postcards about wider things that were going on, seen through the lens of these small characters.”
The album title, taken from the name of a vast open cut mine in the middle of Australia, refers to the feeling of “standing at the edge of the void of the big unknown, and finding something to hold on to.” Hope Downs possesses a robust full-band sound that’s all the more impressive considering the band’s studio avoidance tendencies. Fans of Talk Tight and The French Press certainly won’t be disappointed here.
