As Melbourne veers further towards cementing its place as a mini-New York, its penchant for gritty urban sounds and modern genres seems to multiply at an expedient rate. Enter the city’s four-piece alternative folk outfit Amarillo, whose debut full-length album Eyes Still Fixed presents itself as a work about leaving the big smoke for the sweeping country landscapes of Northern Territory and Western Australia, with a dash of Barcelona and Big Apple jet-setting. The result is a product which feels rural at its core viewed through an urban telescope.

Since launching their debut self-titled EP in 2014, guitarist & songwriter Nick O’Mara, vocalist & songwriter Jac Tonks, bassist Trent Mackenzie and drummer Alex Rogowski have bound cities across various corners of the globe via sprawling road-trips and motel writing sessions. Eyes Still Fixed is the vessel of those long hours counting signposts and coordinating check-ins and departures.

Opening with the lead single ‘All You Can See’, the record immediately whisks you away to a hollow horizon overwrought with a desperate sense of alienation. Courtesy of Jac’s fluttering voice and Nick’s gentle guitar, this territory, while stark, is awe-inspiring with its combination of the endless possibilities and sublime hopelessness. The opener firmly settles the band in folk territory and on ‘Life Was A Song’ we start to feel the land shifting towards something more familiar. The four-piece manage this effortlessly throughout the record, delivering an almost Blink 182-esque hook with a fragile guitar solo sitting atop shivering vocals.

Jac and Nick’s chemistry defines the album, which finds its most endearing and rewarding moment in the titular ‘Eyes Still Fixed’, halfway through its playing time. The haunting warbling of the electric guitar and Jac’s wordless vocals perfectly capture the speechlessness one suffers when forsaken as a stranger in a strange land. It’s the soundtrack of desert navigating bus trips and off road adventures, being ensnared towards a cliff’s edge by a ghost’s siren song on the horizon, with heavy layers of powerful acoustic reverberation and electric chord interplay.

It’s in these moments where the record is at its strongest. Like the band members themselves, who unite the road with Melbourne’s skyline, the music here wavers in and out of rural Western aesthetics to tastes of alternative and psychedelic rock, which is when the LP finds its teeth. Jac and Nick showcase a gift for maleficent compositions and lyric-writing prowess, delivering exceptional hooks paired with an uncompromising yet fleeting sense of innocence.

Simply stated, this is road trip music – but not in the elated, burning rubber fashion. This is the Jack Kerouac, rushing green fields, and schools of birds taking flight into clouded neon orange skies type of road trip music. Eyes Still Fixed feels like a heartbroken love letter to traversing alien landscapes, whose sights and sounds are so impactful that your eyes are still fixed on the road behind you, long after you’ve arrived back home.

8 / 10

Eyes Still Fixed is out October 1 via Gaga Didi, and Amarillo will be returning home to launch the record with a full band show, dates below.

Amarillo ‘Eyes Still Fixed’ Dates

Saturday Oct 8 – Bella Union Hotel, Melbourne VIC
(Full band album launch)

Saturday October 15, 2pm – Sonic Sherpa In Store, QLD

Sunday Oct 16 – The Bearded Lady, Brisbane QLD

Saturday October 29 – Three Brothers Arms Hotel, SA

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