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 acquire renewed life by means 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 checklist 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 accommodations 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 all them is an elegy for a doomed relationship. They inhabit the darkish locations of the thoughts and the soul. “You had 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 rely of all of the medicine you had 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, sluggish and drawn-out, like a dream from which the singer is struggling to awake. Smooth 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 making an attempt to reverse the passage of time by exercising his craft. “November once more, time to present in to the darkish,” he laments: it’s not dusk but, nevertheless it’s getting there. “Convey 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 recommend, within the music of the identical identify, that “loss of life 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 trend.
Many activists prefer to say that the non-public is political: within the Flats’ worldview, it’s the opposite manner spherical. “Tonight, I can write the saddest strains,” sings Walsh at the beginning 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 Method. “She says I can’t stand it/Stand it anyway or else you’ll be able to’t go on,” sings Walsh. It’s an entreaty that brings to thoughts Samuel Beckett’s well-known citation, “You need to 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 music perhaps you gained’t disappear,” runs the closing music. However the protagonist is aware of full properly that he’s combating a shedding battle.
One other lyric brings a deeper understanding: the individuals do disappear, however the object of the sport is to provide 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 guts of the matter: “Are you there within the songs that I’ll go away behind?” It’s a becoming closure to a piece characterised by its utter seriousness of objective. Walsh could have set himself a frightening job, 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 could find the Flats on-line at https://www.theapartments-music.com/. You’ll be able to order their album on Bandcamp right here. They’re additionally on Fb right here.
All phrases by Robert Plummer. Extra writing by Robert could be discovered at his creator’s archive. He’s additionally on X as @robertp926.
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