‘Contact Sport’

The four-headed Irish-Australian rock hyda from Sydney’s inner west, FLICKERTAIL, have released their new single ‘Contact Sport’.

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5z9ilh26v5APBaDAb1Wtr3
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/flickertail/1279204213

FLICKERTAIL play guitar-fuelled rock and roll exactly the way it’s supposed to be played. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Thin Lizzy, the Dubliners, Airbourne and The Darkness. Since their inception, the band have played relentlessly and are reaping the rewards. An incendiary live performance honed in the booze dens and back yard of Australia’s Eastern coast was refined on stages shared with Aussie legends Buffalo and the Superjesus, before international support slots with the likes of Supersuckers, Zak Starkey (Oasis, the Who) and Living Colour.

Liam Whelan – Lead Vocals/Lead and Rhythm Guitar states: “Contact Sport” was written in a rehearsal room bathroom in Salford, Manchester:
“I wrote all my sad songs in Aussie summer – it took a week of Mancunian rain to finally get something more hopeful out of me. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we were living in the gutter, but looking up at the stars. It’s one of the barest arrangements we’ve ever done – I barely play guitar on this song at all. We also left my vocals really dry and untampered with – what you hear on this track is a single take, warts and all. The song is about imperfection and being vulnerable, so it makes sense that the recording is a lean, mean, unshaven beast of a thing.

There’s been a lot written about infatuation and butterflies. Not too many people look at the banal, dirty reality of ongoing love. Some people are afraid of how boring it is and they invent things like affairs – real or imagined – to maintain that excitement. People don’t get that it’s thrilling precisely because you’re allowed to be boring, or not your best self, on some days. You don’t always have to be the best dressed first date guy. Some days you get to eat pizza in your trackie dacks.

This is true in a broader context than just romantic love – as it applies to friends, families, communities, even on a spiritual level – when you commit to loving something or someone, you’re opening yourself to the possibility that you’ll hurt someone you don’t want to. You’re opening yourself to the possibility that you’ll get hurt. God knows my love of Liverpool FC has taught me that.

It also features a sizzling riff and my favourite of Jonny Goldrick’s solos. The Mancunian gets to have his finest hour on the song we wrote in his hometown.’’

With Thin Lizzy inspired guitar lines, AC/DC boogie, bits of Slade stomp, rich vocal harmonies, Beatlesy melodies, and make-a-cinderblock-cry sincerity. Flickertail, play loud and honest with no autotune or sampling in earshot.

You can watch the video for earlier single ‘Right Behind The Eyes’ here: