I OH YOU is thrilled to present ‘Television’ – the exuberant new single from acclaimed Melbourne four-piece City Calm Down, the track premiered yesterday on triple j’s Good Nights.

 

Recorded with producer Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett, The Drones, Julia Jacklin), ‘Television’ is a prescient pop anthem for our times, and the band’s first new material since 2018’s masterful Echoes In Blue. That record debuted at #20 on ARIA Album Charts and #6 on iTunes, earning wide critical acclaim, with NME hailing the band’s “undeniable ambition”. 

 

Now, that same spirit and drive finds City Calm Down hungrier than ever and determined to not repeat themselves on their upcoming third album, due out this year. In celebration of ‘Television’, City Calm Down will perform two exclusive headine shows in May/June. Tickets are on sale now via www.citycalmdown.com.

 

‘Television’ is inspired by 1976’s Sidney Lumet-directed satire Network – an Oscar-winning howl of protest. Four decades on, Network’s bleak vision is more relevant than ever. 

 

“Network depicts an anchorman who loses his mind after his wife dies, and he’s fired. He goes on a series of rants about the impact of television and its relevance to ordinary life,” says frontman Jack Bourke, who referenced one of the film’s infamous media monologues when writing the song’s intro. “One of the greatest opportunities we have today is to access content that’s meaningful to us, but all too often we think of ‘opportunities’ in purely economic terms, which is disingenuous. We live in an age where most of us can access an unlimited amount of visual and audio media … [it] effects who we are and can help us learn more about the world and ourselves. But it can also dull our senses and make us more insular. For example, mindless consumption of social media has allowed it to be weaponised by institutions who seek to undermine the social structures that enabled us to develop that technology in the first place.

 

“But at the end of the day,” Bourke says, “’Television’ is just a pop song and the listener can take as much or as little from it as they choose. Musically, it nods to and steals from T.Rex, The Smiths, The Clash and The Replacements. It’s more adolescent and exciting to us than anything we’ve done before.”

 

Two albums and one EP in, City Calm Down’s accomplished songwriting has earned over 12 million streams on Spotify to date. Championed by triple j – including a Like A Version (465k on YouTube) – and community radio, the band’s ambitions have seen spins on Radio 1 (Huw Stephens) and BBC 6 Music, plus press coverage from NME, Rolling Stone, The 405, Stereogum, Consequence Of Sound, Indie Shuffle, Clash, The Independent, and more.

  

The list of earlier singles is impressive: ‘Son’, ‘Rabbit Run’, ‘Wandering’, ‘Your Fix’, ‘Border On Control’ – from 2015’s assured debut In A Restless House – and ‘Blood’, ‘Joan, I’m Disappearing’, ‘In This Modern Land’, ‘Pride’, ‘Distraction/Losing Sleep’, lifted from 2018’s unflinching Echoes In Blue. That record saw CCD sell out multiple headline tours, including 2,000 capacity venues such as the Forum Theatre (Melbourne) and Metro Theatre (Sydney). Festival history includes: Splendour In The Grass, Laneway, The Great Escape, Gold Sounds, Falls, Sugar Mountain, Beyond The Valley, Yours & Owls and more. 

 

With ‘Television’, the band re-emerge with a brand new statement of intent and confidence. Stay tuned for more to come in 2019 from City Calm Down – and don’t delay in grabbing tickets to these special shows, they will go fast!