Arriving three years after the release of Punchbuzz, Melbourne indie outfit Husky have returned with their mesmerising fourth album, Stardust Blues.
First teased with the release of their “SYWD” single earlier this year, the announcement of Stardust Blues was a welcome return for Husky, who had partially written their new album in an old 1920s mansion and unofficial artistic commune, The Westbury Hotel.
“While we were recording, our home – The Westbury Hotel – where we and our friends and fellow artists lived and slept and woke and wrote and recorded and dreamed, was demolished, to make way for a new block of apartments,” Husky recalled. “During this time, we who lived at the Hotel and our friends were going through the usual day to day cycles of destruction and creation that make up our lives.
“We finished Stardust Blues just as the time came to leave the Hotel but as we left, we converted the place into one big ephemeral work of art – we painted on the walls, we covered walls in scribbled out dreams, we had parties with art installations and music and while all this was happening we recorded live versions of some of the songs from the new record. Even as the place was being demolished, we were recording and filming.
“Until there was nothing left so we took our Tascam 388 tape machine to our friends house in the country and finished the recordings there in her garden.”
The end result is a majestic piece of work which Rolling Stone Managing Editor Poppy Reid bestowed a three-star review upon in the first issue of the magazine in May.
“Husky may have been living life without limits since shedding their folk epithet with 2017s Punchbuzz, but this concept album reveals an openly tender side,” wrote Reid.
“Recorded to 24-track tape, Stardust Blues was prompted by James Joyce’s Ulysses, and follows a character on his Melbourne odyssey. There are some predictable moves but they’re no less satisfying, and appositely, comforting.”
While live gigs feel like a thing of the past at the current time, Husky recently appeared on Rolling Stone’s ‘In My Room’ series back in June, performing album cuts “Cut Myself Loose” and “Wristwatch” in a stripped-back fashion. Meanwhile, the group are also on track to appear at Isol-Aid this weekend, performing a livestream set at 5:40pm AEST on Saturday, August 8th, with a Q&A taking place directly after.
Husky’s Stardust Blues is out now via Ditto Music.
