by David Lefkowitz (@gymshortsdave)
Something’s in the water down under. The 2022 EP is the latest of several records leading me to believe it may well be acid. So much of Australia’s rock & roll exportation of the past decade has had a psychedelic bent to it, be it the fun-loving frizz of King Gizzard, the spaced-out insight of Courtney Barnett, or Michael Beach’s own hazy, vaguely shell-shocked output. Beach, however, has carved out his own place in the Aussie psych-canon, one that is equally wide-eyed as it is wild.
On this latest EP, Beach sounds like he’s processing 2022 about as well as any of us. Rowdy, unmistakably worried anthems are interspersed with short moments of gleeful chaos. Replacements-esque power-pop spills into electronic squealing. Electronic squealing gives way to sludgy exhortation, and just as you’re slipping under, you reemerge to distant echoes of synth-strings so lovely its almost startling. Then you’re back in the sludge.
2022 is probably the perfect title for an album so unpredictable, so anxious, although a good alternative title could be taken from its third track, “Societal Breakdown.” It’s a cathartic listen. It’s a timely listen. With the 2022 EP, a 19 minute and 3 second sigh, Beach has delivered a perfect soundtrack for, if not the apocalypse, certainly this apocalypse.