Australian indie art rockers The Silverbeets present their new ‘Halcyon Days’ album, the band’s third multi-track release. This follows up the tongue-in-cheek single ‘Girlfriend’ and the topical ‘We Mattered Once Upon a Time’.
Formed in 2014, The Silverbeets are Farnz Cordeaux (rhythm guitar, vocals), Jamie Scott (lead guitar, vocals), Nigel Hope (bass) and Bill O’Brien (drums). Their sound is also heavily influenced by their “5th member”, producer and multi-instrumentalist Ernie Oppenheimer.
The Silverbeets hail from Hobart, Tasmania – the small Australian island state at the bottom of the world. This relative isolation has led the band to craft an idiosyncratic sound that borrows from luminary rock acts like Pink Floyd, The Byrds, David Bowie, Radiohead, The Pixies, Queen, Fleet Foxes, Simon & Garfunkel, Nick Cave and Neil Young, among others.
With a rich dark green sound interspersed with multi-coloured stems, their non-formulaic style is distinct. Like their forthcoming 8-track full-length album, this single evoke the spirit of artists such as Can, They Might be Giants and XTC.
On ‘Halcyon Days’, the band pushed themselves to show a range of human emotions and incorporate different musical styles while doing so. Recorded at Bad Radio Studios and Urban Fringe Compound over the past year, all songs were mixed and mastered by Ernie O at Urban Fringe Compound.
In 2016, The Silverbeets debuted their ‘Purple Stems’ EP, rated among the year’s best releases by NBTMusicRadio. The band followed with a ripper cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘We’ve Got a Groovy Thing Goin’ (2016) and their ‘Stay Tuned’ LP in 2018, an epic homage to the concept album (also rated the year’s 16th best album by NBTMusicRadio). In January 2020, they released ‘I’ve Got to Get Away (on an Hawaiian Holiday)’, a polemic tune on the lack of government leadership in handling the fires in Australia.
As of November 13, the ‘Halcyon Days’ album will be released on CD and will be available for streaming on platforms such as Spotify, as well as at online stores such as Apple Musicand Bandcamp.