Review - The Belair Lip Bombs – Again (Third Man Records, 2026) english version

 How a young Australian band is rewriting jangle for a generation caught between nostalgia and hyper-presence

Over the last fifteen years, Australia has become one of the most fertile laboratories for guitar music: an ecosystem in which jangle — that combination of bright guitars, gentle melancholy and melodic immediacy — has found new forms, new languages and new communities. It is a legacy that began in the 1980s, spread through the suburbs of Brisbane and Melbourne, and reached the bedrooms of a generation raised on streaming, precariousness and an almost stubborn desire for emotional sincerity.

On their second album, Again, The Belair Lip Bombs fit surprisingly naturally into the long tradition of Australian jangle, a legacy rooted in the Go-Betweens and the Lucksmiths, which has found new life in the Melbourne scene in recent years. The band chooses not to replicate the shadowy melancholy of Flying Nun's New Zealand jangle, preferring a brighter, more pop, more emotionally accessible approach. And they do so with an album that speaks of emotional cycles, comebacks and everyday fragility — but they do so with an all-Australian light, a brightness that does not erase the shadows, but makes them livable.

The Belair Lip Bombs draw on a forty-year legacy: from literary jangle to contemporary suburbs. To understand Again, we need to go back beyond the aforementioned Go-Betweens, to the Triffids and the Church: bands that in the 1980s defined a guitar aesthetic capable of being melancholic without being gloomy, introspective without being claustrophobic. It was a different kind of jangle from the New Zealand variety: less minimalist, less shadowy, more narrative, more connected to light and open spaces.

In the 1990s and 2000s, this tradition transformed into something more intimate and domestic: the Lucksmiths, Even As We Speak and the Cannanes brought jangle into homes, small gestures and everyday relationships. Then, in the 2010s, Melbourne became the new epicentre: Twerps, Dick Diver, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, The Ocean Party. Intertwined guitars, elastic rhythms, a sense of community reflected in the music.

Belair Lip Bombs come after all this, but they don't seem weighed down by tradition. Again is not an album that looks back with museum-like nostalgia: it is an album that uses jangle as a living language, as a tool to recount a complex emotional present.

The first thing that strikes you about Again is its brightness. Bradvica's guitars do not seek dissonance or lo-fi roughness: they are clean, bright, almost transparent. It is a sound that rejects darkness as an aesthetic, but not as a theme. Meanwhile, Maisie Everett's vocals bring to the fore lyrics that explore emotional cycles, recurring memories and everyday fragility. Again and Again is the thematic centrepiece of the album, a song that reflects on emotional repetition with a delicacy that avoids sentimentality. Cinema observes emotional distance through an almost cinematic lens, while Burning Up introduces a darker tension and features the darkest lyrics: it speaks of consuming oneself, of feeling overwhelmed, of emotions that become too intense. It is also the most metaphorical, least narrative track, suggesting a possible future evolution.

Back Of My Hand, with surprising lightness, talks about intimacy losing its lustre when it becomes routine, about deep knowledge being lost in predictability that turns into weariness.

Don't Let Them Tell You (It's Fair) presents the most assertive lyrics on the album. It talks about external pressures, judgements and social expectations. It is an invitation not to accept imposed narratives.

There is melancholy, but it is a melancholy that breathes.

In this sense, Belair Lip Bombs clearly distance themselves from New Zealand jangle: no ghostly atmospheres, no motorik minimalism, no crypticism. Again is an album that wants to be understood, that wants to be shared, that wants to be experienced.

The poetics of repetition: emotions that return, relationships that reopen

The title is no coincidence. Again is an album built around the idea of cyclicality: relationships that return, thoughts that recur, emotional habits that are difficult to break.

There is no drama, no catharsis: there is a circular, almost tidal movement.

It is a poetics that belongs deeply to the current generation and differs from other contemporary bands: there is none of the political anger of Camp Cope, nor the brutal diary-writing of Goon Sax, nor the geographical narrative of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever.

Here, everything is internal, but never closed. An album that belongs to a place but does not name it. One of the most interesting features of Again is its ability to be deeply Australian without ever saying so explicitly. There are no streets, neighbourhoods or geographical references.

Yet the light, the rhythm and the spatiality of the sound clearly speak of Melbourne, of a certain way of experiencing music as a community, as sharing, as continuity.

It is an album that seems to have been born in small clubs, in shared houses, on sunny afternoons. An album that carries tradition with it without imitating it.

If the Australian jangle of the 1980s was literary, that of the 1990s was domestic, that of the 2010s was communal, Again represents a new phase: emotional jangle, relational jangle, the jangle of inner cyclicality.

It is an album that does not want to be revolutionary, but meaningful. It does not want to be loud, but clear. It does not want to be perfect, but true.

And in a global music scene that often rewards excess, saturation and performance, this choice of moderation, light and sincerity is perhaps the most radical thing Belair Lip Bombs could do.