Text: Andy Fenwick
Australia’s Flyying Colours sit squarely in the shoegaze revival (ok, neugaze) of the last ten years. That’s not to say they’re derivative at all. Like their many neugaze cohorts and tour mates (pinkshinyultrablast), they’re excellent songwriters, and also versatile, commonly forging new sounds from the many incarnations of the shoegaze genre since its mid-eighties birth. For instance, “It’s Tomorrow Now,” the first single from their debut full length “Mindfullness,” Flyying Colours set the swoon-worthy vocal harmonies of members Brodie J Brümmer and Gemma O’Connor atop non-standard tuned riffs and soloed squalls of pedal effects. To file “It’s Tomorrow Now” under “Slowdive vs. My Bloody Valentine” wouldn’t be wrong, but filing Flyying Colours as a band in any one category would be a mistake. Take, for instance, previous songs like the spectacular “Running Late,” on 2015’s ROYGBIV EP (later collected on “EPX2”); as pure a sunny-day distillation of House of Love vs Ride-like pop hasn’t graced a turntable in decades. And yet, on the same EP, they just as breezily spin a spacious, churning anthem like “I Don’t Want to Let You Down,” evoking Versus, Skywave, or early Tame Impala. Which is to say: evoking Flyying Colours. The point of genre is to transcend it, and they do.
