- The earliest recordings of Shining Bird that I heard only originate from early 2012. They emanated brokenly over the internet from somewhere obscure on NSW’s North (Central? South? Somewhere obscure, anyway) -Coast. Fragments of synth-pop, loungey exotica and lazy ambience, with some deep voiced weirdo crooning crazily over the top.

As a media organisation that plays music you get a lot of submissions a bit like this. I’m not sure most people realise, but the majority of the world’s musical output is home-created strangeness. The kind of thing that was created with only the vaguest idea of what constitutes music and even less of a chance of turning that into anything that sounds particularly like music. To be exposed to that all day long is one of the more horrifying pursuits you can engage in. It’s very easy to become extremely allergic to bizarre attachments leaking out of your emails, straining like some semi-sentient ooze, trying to get in your ears.

For that reason I very nearly flushed Shining Bird’s demos straight out the airlock. Nearly, but not quite. There was something which, when those various fragments came together - which they didn’t always, but when they did - was very, relaxingly, good. The cheese of the lounge, the bright sweetness of the synth-pop, the really relaxing, ambient laziness just shining off it. Frontman Dane Taylor’s very mannered vocals work too, if you take them in the right way. A distressed colleague said they sounded like Kirin J. Callinan without the viperous humour or intelligence. Well, yes; but you could more profitably compare them to the extremely oblique wit of Henry Wagons (transported to an entirely different genre) and with just a touch of Barry Manilow rolled in.

If that sounds like your cup of tea / banana daiquiri, great! I was deeply pleased and wrote enthusiastically about it at the time. I also assumed that would be the last I’d hear of Shining Bird, that no such wayward aviator could make it for long in the cruel world of reality.

How wrong I was! Soon Spunk Records were hitting us up, saying ‘hey, we’ve signed Shining Bird and they’re in the studio recording their debut.’ Because I largely don’t believe in happiness, I immediately became terrified. How could such a strange jumble of sounds possibly survive when they were put through a proper studio, using unbroken machines, with producers and label people standing in the background going ‘tsk, are you sure you want to do that?’

So happy to be wrong! Leisure Coast is a delicious fruit cocktail of lazy, downbeat, 80’s clavinova and sax-lick inspired, synthetic exotica. The bits that didn’t quite work appear to have been trimmed, neatly. Everything I did liked about their undeniable strangeness has survived, for my listening pleasure and for yours too, I fervently hope.

- Chris Cobcroft.