Never underestimate rock and roll’s ability to look inwards, and backwards, to re-heat its own bones in an attempt to sound new. Cue Lonesome Shack, who hail, geographically if not spiritually, from the flanellete shirt and trucker cap American frontier of its North-West.

It seems a lifetime ago when the two great outposts of Sydney rock and roll were its northern and southern beaches. They were feeder tributaries to the inner-city and spawned bands like the Celibate Rifles and the Trilobites, to name just a couple. 

The venues that were their spawning grounds have long closed down, the bands willing to play their own music thin on the ground. Only a hardy few are still willing to take a risk and make the swim up-stream.

Sometime I-94 Bar scribe Ken Shimamoto has birthed a new band online. Brokegrove Lads is a psychedelic improv rock group with musicians from Fort Worth and Albuquerque and their first release is a single, composed in tribute to late Deviants vocalist, writer and Pink Fairies alumnus Mick Farren.

One of Australian underground music’s most special, enduring and well-travelled talents Penny Ikinger will play shows in Perth and Fremantle for the first time in May, en route to Japan to record with Deniz Tek.

There's not much more information than what's on the poster but onetime Stooge Jimmy Recca (now living in L.A.) is playing a show in Arlington, Virginia. If you want to know about Mr Recca and his Stooges history, you could do no better than reading this interview by Ken Shimamoto originally penned for Easy Action Records.

The New Christs have a long history running through possibly the most convoluted list of line-up changes any band has endured and still retained a moniker.  This has meant new albums have held a certain fear factor.  What will they sound like this time?  Can anything they do compare to the towering peak of “Distemper”?  Let’s face it.  If that’s your five-star album, you have a lot to live up to.

No one really sounds quite like Suzie Stapleton. Being an original artist, that is a supreme compliment. Suzie also really takes risks with her music - and that is another compliment.

He was a fixture on the Aussie live circuit until recently and Bluebottle Kiss main-man Jamie Hutchings is returning to the fray with a new album and band, Infinity Broke.

Adelaide has a history of swaggering, scrunching rock and roll bands who manage to spit out one single or EP and vanish into the backwater. Acid Drops and Die Dancing Bears, for example. Few are lucky enough to release an LP and get away with it like, say, The Primevils and the Exploding White Mice.