I think it was Jack from Guppy who likened Brisbane guitar music with an active compost pile, a foetid mass – productive insofar as it is decomposing. In such an analogy, Craning is the clump of writhing industrious worms towards the bottom, soon to wriggle out. Their debut release DISTRESS TOLERANCE bears all the despondence of Brisbane’s distinct regional affect but is not reducible to such. Their 2010s forebearers genuflected at The Jesus Lizard, The Birthday Party and the bastardisation no wave, but here Craning achieve something more ineffable and structurally interesting. Sure, the (emotional)post-hardcore/noise-punk tasting notes are important, but more prominent to my palette is Craning’s interactions with the Atopos cinematic universe (see: Group Therapy). Experimental but intentional, songs like ‘Start Pregnant’, and especially the live ver of ‘Born With It’ are exercises in restraint, texture, and noise/ambience – the sound of a street sweeper going about its nocturnal work reminding you of the urban machine.

Isobel’s pith manifests like Bjork pleading inside weatherboarded nether-realm, as dynamic as the instrumentals, not confined to the screamed, spoken or sung but deploying complex mixtures of each to her own ends. The contrasts, melodies and mood achieved on 'Metro North Access Line' is especially rich and perhaps the best I’ve heard her. She once sang about fucking off to Melbourne and losing your mind. Ball Park Music astroturfed the same idea in a shit song and it placed highly on some equally shitty list. I eagerly look forward to BPM’s appropriation of TikTok eugenics and to see how our culture industry ranks that. But we’re getting off track. On the tubs, James Dimmick seamlessly guides from a driving pitter-patter to head-cranked groove to put-the-hammer-down full bluster ride demolition. Amaya’s gritty n stern bass lines afford the guitar room to swelter in diminished dissonance, open strings ringing through the press of a whammy bar. Here, James extracts the sorta foreboding angular creep that you associate with an ol’ aluminium neck but the actual mix of reference points probably stem more from the thankless task of having mixed and endured every good noise-y guitar band to play in Brisbane. Such acumen and direct access to the TONE ZONE also no doubt contributes to the impeccable production heard throughout. All in all, DISTRESS TOLERANCE will be one of the best Australian releases of the year, and is as fresh, compelling and beyond tropes as anything you’ll hear from our local scenes. Five bags of popcorn plus another bag, so six bags of popcorn in total.