Album Review: The Medics - Foundations

With a wave of anticipation steadily building over the past 12 months, The Medics' debut album, Foundations, is finally upon us and it hits like a tsunami of energy, passion and power. Producer Yanto Browning has captured the impassioned live intent the band have built their reputation on and bottled it into 11 impeccable tracks, the album maintaining their onstage vigour while polishing it just enough to allow it to burn brightly through the speakers.

The Queenslanders have this ability to drive their songs to pinnacles, allowing those heights to then amplify the power in the music and the listener's experience as a whole. The layered build-up during Rust pulses until it explodes in a pause-gap punch of epic proportions, while the frantic stick work and swirling guitars on Ocean Eyes provide the most suitable of platforms for Kahl Wallace's dreamlike vocal crescendos. Although the front half of the album is filled with high-rotation singles such as Beggars and Joseph, it's the latter parts of the album that show the full spectrum of ideas conjured up by the four-piece. The therapeutic Deadman, straight-up Slowburn and reflective acoustic ode, 50 Years, all add to the various shades of Foundations, while Golden Bear provides the fitting finale the album deserves, the song a beautiful celebration of all that tomorrow can bring.

The only reason Foundations doesn't get full marks is because, frighteningly, this band still have so much more to offer. Incredibly, The Medics have crafted a sound that's uniquely their own, and it's by creating their own pathway and not following in the footsteps of others that they stand head and shoulders above any young, emerging band in this country. A true victory.