- DEAFCULT are a brand new Brisbane band, cobbled together from the remains of others, including Roku Music, Nuclear Summer and The Gift Horse. Even if you don’t know any of these other local luminaries, if you’ve heard DEAFCULT, you’d guess that they all have a pedigree in volume and lots of it, one which they’re giving free reign in this new project.

While that’s true, DEAFCULT follows one of its forbears -Roku Music- much more assiduously than the others. Where Nuclear Summer and The Gift Horse pumped out that hard, smart and emotive latter-day punk music you hear a lot of on Poison City records here in Australia, Roku Music and DEAFCULT melt faces with their ‘gaze.

Strangely, shoegaze has never really been a sound that’s taken in Brisbane. It’s not that there are no My Bloody Valentine, Ride or Jesus & Mary Chain fans about, there are heaps, but very few of them have started their own shoegaze bands. That’s been changing, you can hear shoegaze licking around the corners of the sounds of bands like Rational Academy, Keep On Dancin’s, Tape/Off or Blonde Tongues. The Creases decided they didn’t like being an anaemic garage band and re-invented themselves as an anaemic shoegaze outfit. There are also shoegaze bands that are making it their main occupation, right out of the gate, like the recently formed, Forevr, Roku Music of course, and now, DEAFCULT.

DEAFCULT distinguish themselves, even from Roku Music, by taking an emotional left-turn, linking up shoegaze with alt-pop sounds of a similar vintage but a much sunnier outlook. You could namecheck The Breeders, Lush or Australians like The Falling Joys or The Clouds, but there are plenty out of Brisbane itself, Screamfeeder, Clag or even Sekiden. The band focus on appropriately candyfloss themes, hitting day-glo popculture reference points with titles like Beemomug and Akira. Add male and female vocals twining round each other in warm and slightly jangly alt-pop tunes, then drown everything in an all-encompassing wall of guitar fuzz.

There’s plenty to like in that formula, quite probably enough to get through all seven tracks of this self-titled EP, although more concerted listeners will be rewarded with the outlines of the alt-pop cuts emerging more clearly from the sometimes homogenous crush of noise. Some personal favourites surface in those harmonies and riffs, like the chiming guitar line which rings like a bell through the haze on late track, Throwing Sparks.

Brisbane is getting in late on the shoegaze re-re-revival, and as a town which knew what to do with a guitar, back in the ‘90s, it's been a bit of a glaring omission. However, if anyone doubted its denizens had the capacity to pull it off, DEAFCULT provides an emphatic rebuttal.

- Chris Cobcroft.