THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Arbes’s debut album Counterways exists on the cusp between the ethereal and the more attention-seeking concerns of pop.
The record invites listeners into an unusual sonic world of atmospheric depth. Comparisons can be drawn to the New York post-punk of everyone from Blondie to Gang Gang Dance. The dream-pop of Scotland’s Cocteau Twins is also readily apparent, while the album’s gritty art-rock ambience brings to mind Deerhunter. Glimmering flashes of psychedelia lend from the likes of Melody’s Echo Chamber.
The 10-track album explores romantic dreaming and the struggle to (not) understand and to be understood. It memorialises glimmers of connection, discontentment and longing. Frontwoman Jess Zanoni explains: “Counterways reflects the multiplicity of emotional memory. It’s both confession, and a fear of this confession. Desire is the throughline across the record, manifesting in many conflicting selves.”
Zanoni’s soulful, oracular voice is anchored by the earthbound brambles of prickly guitar and brushstroke percussion, where all is tethered to a surface of unearthly detail and resonances. Some of these details may be illusory: There is a lot of gorgeous trailing silence between notes and sounds on Counterways, and the lyrics tread softly and widely. It’s spacious.
Arbes made a conscious decision to avoid any chance of a passive listening experience, striving towards creating “foreground music,” which they describe as “forward looking.” Arbes eke out every possible ounce of emotionality from their songs. Not to sedate, but to guide listeners somewhere unexpected, at the song or album’s conclusion.
Counterways was written and recorded over a five-year period (2017-2022), between the bedroom studio of guitarist Sam Pannifex’s family home in Williamstown (a suburb in the inner west of Melbourne, where Arbes all grew up), and the band’s present shared studio in Coburg North. The songs went through multiple evolutions throughout the years, as they were thoughtfully and patiently pieced together. Melbourne producer Theo Carbo was brought onboard to mix the record and his unique ideas, production techniques and magic complemented the band’s overall vision for the album perfectly.
Counterways is a gentle warmth rubbing against the frisson of something verging punk, in the exploratory and not commodified sense. The mythical and the urban converge: dense, ghostly reverberation meets the functional whirring of a city. But most prominent is the sense of something blissfully airborne tugged gently to the earth; that is Arbes’s own region.”
