The Flats: That’s What The Music Is For
Launched 17 October 2025
CD | Vinyl | DL | Streaming
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
Cult Australian band the Flats are releasing their eighth studio album after a five-year hole. Of their crepuscular world, romantic attachments from the previous achieve renewed life by way of songs. Robert Plummer likes the distress.
Sydney-born and Brisbane-bred, Peter Milton Walsh has been plying his commerce as a singer-songwriter since 1978. What Mark E Smith was to the Fall, he’s to the Flats, though in his case, file books listing a mere 18 former group members. Nonetheless, that’s the place the similarities between the 2 bands finish.
The Flats play temper music for moody individuals. Tunes for all of the dive bars in all of the heartbreak lodges of the world. Songs for these nights when you realize you’re going to have the mom of all hangovers within the morning.
There are eight songs on this album and virtually each one in every of them is an elegy for a doomed relationship. They inhabit the darkish locations of the thoughts and the soul. “You have been at all times my favorite misplaced trigger,” confides Walsh on opening quantity It’s A On line casino Life, earlier than including: “I misplaced depend of all of the medication you have been on.”
The sample repeats itself on Afternoons (“I beloved the world that got here with you”) and A Handful Of Tomorrow (“I beloved you whereas the music performed”). At all times the identical wistful, sorrowful musical setting, gradual and drawn-out, like a dream from which the singer is struggling to awake. Delicate piano, gently strummed guitar: nothing to frighten the horses, nothing to detract from the beautiful lyrical heartache.
Delicate tonal variations do emerge over time. Natasha Perot duets on Afternoons; Nick Kennedy’s drums are extra forceful throughout A Handful Of Tomorrow; One other Solar Gone Down is buoyed by Jeff Crawley’s plaintive trumpet. However these are particulars that take a number of listens to understand absolutely.
That’s What The Music Is For (When The Truthful’s Over) finds Walsh attempting to reverse the passage of time by exercising his craft. “November once more, time to provide in to the darkish,” he laments: it’s not dusk but, however it’s getting there. “Carry again the times that had you in them/That’s what the music is for.”
Regardless of his high-quality songwriting, Walsh has loved little business success in his almost 5 many years of exercise. So it’s disturbing to listen to him counsel, within the tune of the identical identify, that “demise could be my finest profession transfer”. Worse, he appears to be solely half-joking – however the joke is an effective one, albeit delivered within the driest, most deadpan style.
Many activists prefer to say that the private is political: within the Flats’ worldview, it’s the opposite method spherical. “Tonight, I can write the saddest strains,” sings Walsh at first of The American Resistance, leaving listeners musing that no matter’s coming subsequent, he’s already given it stiff competitors. Ultimately, it’s one other failed love affair, the one between citizen and nation: “America has fallen now/Resistance risin’ in each city.”
Issues come to a head within the bleak six-minute epic You Know We’re Not Supposed To Really feel This Means. “She says I can’t stand it/Stand it anyway or else you may’t go on,” sings Walsh. It’s an entreaty that brings to thoughts Samuel Beckett’s well-known citation, “You could go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
Finally, this album bears witness to the facility of music to immortalise lovers and emotions. “If I sing this tune possibly you received’t disappear,” runs the closing tune. However the protagonist is aware of full properly that he’s preventing a dropping battle.
One other lyric brings a deeper understanding: the individuals do disappear, however the object of the sport is to supply songs that can outlive them. “I’ve seen so many come and go/The music stays, the singer goes,” sings Walsh.
The ultimate line of the file will get to the center of the matter: “Are you there within the songs that I’ll depart behind?” It’s a becoming closure to a piece characterised by its utter seriousness of goal. Walsh could have set himself a frightening activity, however those that have ears to listen to could discover that these songs will lengthy endure of their hearts and minds.
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You’ll find the Flats on-line at https://www.theapartments-music.com/. You may order their album on Bandcamp right here. They’re additionally on Fb right here.
All phrases by Robert Plummer. Extra writing by Robert might be discovered at his creator’s archive. He’s additionally on X as @robertp926.
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