The Burley Griffin
Lost Limbs

When the Tree Bears Fruit is the debut album from Melbourne four-piece Parsnip. Following on from two 7-inches in the last two years, Parsnip’s first full-length is playful, poetic, propulsive punk.An album perpetually in motion, When the Tree Bears Fruit is just over half an hour of absurd, understated energy. There’s an immediacy to the sheer joy, velocity and whimsy of Parsnip’s delivery. Bass player and most-of-the-time lyricist Paris Richens is the first to admit that she finds inspiration in children’s verse and the sonics of nursery rhymes – “Sprouts” is an ode to plants in their first form, and “Trip the Light” is about the sheer joy of dancing. That said, Richens’ bandmates – drummer Carolyn Hawkins, guitarist Stella Rennex and keys player Rebecca Liston – are quick to remind her that nursery rhymes are almost always pretty twisted.No one is being baked into a pie in a Parsnip song, but they deal in themes of loneliness, longing, the unknown and the mundane, almost as much as they dream of travel and make a romantic spectacle of the everyday. Across the album, transport and movement recur as an image, mostly alluding to a dreamy sense of possibility: lead single “Lift Off” is a plea for a quick flight away, “Seafarer” is a voyage against nature’s adversity, and “Lighthouse Beacon” sees a hope in the distance.Ultimately, this is an album that invites its listener to join in its celebration: the record’s title, inspired by the ideas of guru and poet Sri Chinmoy, refers to the idea that a tree will grow fruit and it will be offered for anyone and everyone to share in. The band see this principle as it applies to their work – to sharing their joy and nonsense with the world, and hoping people will enjoy it.

The Snakes: future, past, present punk. Outsider rock'n'roll for the greedy listener. De ja vu punk with satisfying sounds, dirty rhythms and shrieking tones. Snakes perform reptile rock with flange and overdrive, shrill budget keys and cowboy swing drumbeats. Cohesive blend of L.A. sleeze, post punk and pop.Providing the new soundtrack for the depraved and twisted - casual bangers include Snakes Bday, Solid Income and Pop Song that fit in with the likes of your Richard Hells, your Gun Clubs and your Electric Eelses. Snakes are Steph Cheeseman, Charlotte Zarb, Jimmy Mcgarrie, James Dadd and Lewis Hodgson.

Efficient Space: ...Oz Echoes peels away another layer of Australia’s ‘80s DIY hive mind. The Oz Waves successor exposes a deeper circuit of micro-run cassettes, community radio archives and irrationally abandoned studio sessions, as Steele Bonus sequences a 10-track compendium of drone pop, psyche-electronics and agitated tape cut-ups.From the Sydney cassette network, The Horse He's Sick returns with an industrial car crash, alongside Wrong Kind of Stone Age’s pagan cacophony and primal riddims. M Squared dynamo Patrick Gibson appears in both Height/Dismay and Mr Knott, his respective studio-as-an-instrument collaborations with Dru Jones (Scattered Order) and ex-Slugfucker Gordon Renouf - the former’s worn out apparition hails from an instantly deleted 1981 7”, while Mr Knott entrust one of the compilation’s five previously unreleased tracks.Matt Mawson represents Brisbane music media-printed matter collective ZIP, as Adelaide’s Three D Radio grants access to their vaults of live-to-air recordings and aspiring demo submissions, rescuing the slap-happy punk-funk of The Frenzied Bricks and Jandy Rainbow’s prodigious beginnings in Les Trois Etrangers and Aeroplane Footsteps. Synchronously in Melbourne, Ash Wednesday (Karen Marks, The Metronomes) leads Modern Jazz’ improvised proto-techno and EBM pioneers Shanghai Au Go-Go home record their sardonic synth-wave.A cherry-picked cast of unusual suspects, Oz Echoes’ unfamed artist and non-band narratives are detailed by track-by-track liner notes with rarely published archival visions and artwork from Video Synth, prompting further rabbit hole ventures into this golden era of creative risk-taking and instant action.