A pub-punk frontman known for acerbic character studies, Blake Scott specialises in prodding and puncturing the clichés of Australian culture. After all, his band The Peep Tempel made its name with the 2014 anthem Carol: a shout-along exaggeration of blokey masculinity that introduced the cult Melbourne trio to dramatically wider audiences and subsequently racked up more than a million plays on Spotify.
With that band on hiatus since late 2017, Scott has re-emerged as a solo artist. And though he is again leading a three-piece band with a robust focus on lyrical detail and scenery-chewing vocal turns, his debut album explores his favoured themes in looser, weirder ways. Unmoored from The Peep Tempel’s standout rhythm section of drummer Steven Carter and bassist Stewart Rayner (who now play in the spacious yet noisy Shepparton Airplane), Scott mostly eschews his erstwhile band’s muscular drive to instead stretch out and hold forth like the unreliable narrator he’s always been.