- Harley Young could easily be labelled as ‘straight outta Sandgate’. So enamoured is he with his home suburb on the northern bayside of Brisbane that his last album, Flinders Parade, was not only named after the main street through Sandgate but featured song after song with local references. He even has a tattoo of the suburb’s postcode – 4017.

The Flinders Parade album featured a full backing band known as The Haymakers – a group who called themselves Go Go Fish when they played and recorded their own tunes. By contrast, Harley Young’s latest EP, entitled Phone Home, is a recording that is stripped back to the basics, with only one former Haymaker, Phillipa Perrott, also performing on the recording. It is available in good old school cassette format, as well as download through Bandcamp.

Despite loving his home suburb enough to do a concept album about it, Harley has spent a lot of time living and playing in other parts of the world, developing his songwriting skills and repertoire, as well as picking up a whole lot of experiences to write songs about. Which is handy, as Harley Young is the type of songwriter who unabashedly sings about his own experiences – often simple ones, but frequently tinged with the sort of wistful nostalgia that realises that the simple experiences that lodge in your memory can be among the most meaningful.

He has spent time living and playing music in Canada and more recently in France. He and Phillipa Perrott are currently playing some gigs in various parts of Europe in amongst more travelling. Which means it makes perfect sense that he has given his latest release the name Phone Home.

The track Road Trip to Glasgow most readily captures the mundaneness and magic of travelling to different places, but he still references experiences at home in some of the other tunes. Harley himself has described the cassette as “four songs about travel, home, lunar phenomena, chicken and beer, Brisbane, home and away.” The tunes feature Harley strumming simple acoustic guitar chords, painting his evocative word pictures accompanied by some well matching harmonies and the occasional violin riff from Phillipa.

If you like simple lo fi tunes to sing along to about everyday experiences and memories, this EP could end up becoming a special memory in your own life.

- Andrew Bartlett.