Project Description

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MAXINE GILLON
‘American Coffee’
(Single Review)

Release Date:
11th November 2022

Pre-Save HERE

Reviewer: Melanie Griffiths

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Be transported away to another time and place with Maxine Gillon’s latest single “American Coffee”. Coming hot on the heels of the release of her new EP “Ultra Lounge”, “American Coffee” is a swirling exploration and commentary on the Americanisation of our perspectives and ready consumption to do so. Dripping with cool introspection, this is exactly the type of song that lingers for a while and elicits conversation.

For Maxine, the idea of “American Coffee” came from the title itself. The juxtaposition of both words of a drink that is “black, cheap, instant and strong”, which is an abstraction of the original drink that leaves it devoid of its traditional flavour and character was too enticing not to explore. Indeed Maxine is interested in challenging how we consume information in this quick-paced society that lacks a desire for nuanced considered thought in favour of a never-ending cycle of information when it comes to understanding different issues.

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“American Coffee” swaggers with an art rock vibe, incorporating elements of traditional instruments with an industrial hum. As such, this song would be as much at home as in the 1990s with its glimmers of Pulp and The Jesus And Mary Chain. Airy vocals that warn of characters being stained and of our voyeuristic desires wash over the song that rolls along with a rhythm that beats insistently. Much like the artist, “American Coffee” drips with sardonic coolness which isn’t that surprising given that the Melbourne base singer-songwriter delivers music that sounds worldly in its ambitious production.

Maxine has crafted a song that is hypnotic and impossible to turn away from. If you are wanting more than the usual sound from Melbourne indie-pop groups and crave music that embraces alternative motifs, then “American Coffee” is exactly the order you need to kick start your day. Check it out when it’s released on Friday, the 11th of November.

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UPCOMING SHOWS

October 28th, Colour Club, Carlton, VIC (supporting The Melodrones)
December 8th, Cactus Room, Northcote with Full Fleshed & Texarkana Kills

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Pre-Save HERE

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Maxine says on the writing process of ‘American Coffee’: “I heard or read “American Coffee” somewhere, which struck me as an interesting juxtaposition of words. To me that’s black, cheap, instant and strong coffee. Some capitalistic abstraction of a traditional process, devoid of taste or care.
The song is about the Americanisation of our own perception of our lives via the media we’ve grown up on and that surrounds us. I moved to Melbourne and very mundane cultural differences to Sydney all seemed so Hollywood to me. Social classes intermingling in neighbourhoods, different attitudes to drug use, rubbing shoulders with icons of the music scene, mobster movie posters aligning the walls of a strip club, tram cops, neo-nazis etc.”

Maxine says of the writing process of the EP: “I was watching a lot of 80’s New German Cinema in lockdown as well as Catherine Breillant and Oliver Assayas movies. The EP as a whole is imagined as a filmic abstraction or character exaggeration of myself in those worlds. A soft butch lounge singer in a garish wintery urban milleu filled with melodrama, theatrical danger, menacing sexuality and solambulistic darkness. It became an avenue for letting myself get quite camp, poppy and emotive as a singer and musician, through embodying an exaggerated persona.”

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Check out MAXINE GILLON below
Facebook – Instagram
Soundcloud – Spotify – Apple Music

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AMNPLIFY – DB