Album Review: The Coolites - Caravan Park Summers

As the band name might suggest, it’s probably about growing up in a slightly different Australia.

Songwriter Simon Gibson was raised in the Bondi from before the cafés became trattorias or taquerias. Holidays were Caravan Park Summers, and as you grew the music that came to sustain you tended to centre around When Strummer Was Alive. The bands you inevitably formed took their cue from locals heroes like Midnight Oil’s semi-surf guitars or The Go-Betweens’ sometimes awkward conversations – and you can still hear echoes through Gibson’s salt spray-flecked reminiscences.