Album Review: Strangers - From Now On

Although unashamedly of Melbourne’s black-clad gutter-blues tradition, Strangers’ second release adds more dynamics to their uneasy character studies. Gabriel Santos remains an artist on the verge of a nervous breakdown at points, but that’s often balanced across this EP with a quieter – but still troubled – hypnotic swirl on songs like Blossom and the lysergic drive of Joyride. This makes the wilder descent into despair, with attendant outbreaks of Aidan Kelly’s lurching guitar, in Boys perhaps even more effective. They use words like ‘broken’ and ‘tormented’, but are sometimes agonisingly aware they are.