STRINE WHINE: ISSUE 07 printed in A4 black-and-white.

IN THE SEVENTH ISSUE OF STRINE WHINE:

Reviews of releases from Nervous Trend, Fresh Hex, VENUS II, Sampa the Great, Mikey Young x Jess Ribeiro, Primitive Calculators, Empat Lima, HTMLFlowers, and Skybox.

MEREDITH'S GOLDEN BOY: The Meredith Music Festival and its sister soiree, Golden Plains, are healthy. Their competitors are dying left right and centre. Why? A lot of it’s got to do with how Meredith and GP are run - emphasis on personal responsibility, communal care, respect - but one part of it is that they keep booking the best lineups. Woody McDonald has been largely responsible for the last few years. Here’s some of what it took for him to get there.

A WEEKEND AT AUNTY'S: 25 years in and the annual Meredith Music Festival, like a lotta 25 year olds, has yet to lose its vigor to maturity. Unlike a lotta 25 year olds, it’s got a real solid handle on its shit. This is how it rang in its Silver Jubilee.

FLAG-BURNIN', RULE-BREAKIN', KOCHIE-FUCKIN' DICK DIVER: Following two shows at The Tote over Christmas - their only shows in Australia for 2015 - not even Dick Diver know where Dick Diver are going next. Who cares? Their latest record, Melbourne, Florida, is their best yet, a totally gripping record of bitterness, cultural criticism, isolation, longing, rebellion, and self-satisfaction. It fuckin’ shreds, too. Rupert Edwards, Al McKay, Al Montfort and Stephanie Hughes are some of Australia’s most precise and imaginative writers - not just in music - and musicians, and even though Rupe once said “There are no love letters,” referring to his own writing, this is kind of a love letter to that.

New issues out every month. Email tracks, records, gigs, praise, hateful epistles and anything else to jakecleland@gmail.com.

Includes unlimited streaming of STRINE WHINE: ISSUE 07 via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.