What a long way this Sydney band has come in a few years – and not just geographically speaking.

The Prehistorics have done the European touring thing a couple of times now, returning home to relative indifference. Main-man Brendan Sequiera was planning to relocate to France but red tape and lukewarm day job prospects have put that plan on the backburner.

What he and his band have delivered with their fourth long-player is an album of world-class, melodic but hard-hitting rock and roll. It will go down a storm offshore and - all things being equal - should make an audience closer to home sit up and listen as well.

The loudest sound you’ll hear on this is the bottom of the barrel being scraped.

The intentions were probably sound. Assembling a collection of previously unheard works-in-progress by the man who was a driving force in rock and roll’s most criminally under-recognised band makes perfect sense. 

Provided the raw material you have is bountiful and of premium grade. 

It wasn’t and it is not.

They were around for only a year and were well short of being a household name in Australia by the time they played their final note in 1967, but Steve & The Board left a handy collection of recordings in the wake. Legacy label Playback has applied love and diligence to this historical release and more power to them for preserving Australia’s musical past.

Steve & The Board played beat pop, pure and simple. Some of it carries the aroma of a stab at the charts, other songs shows broader love for the hard-edged R&B of the times. Most Australian bands in the mid-‘60s were in the thrall of the British Invasion that had hit the USA and Steve & The Board were no exception. Their recordings aren’t world beaters but have vibrancy and some occasional grit.

The reason these two sit together here is that there is a similarity.

Ever since Nick’s "Boatman’s Call" made it acceptable, musicians have been coming out of the woodwork with quiet, intense music. Some are, naturally, better than others. Some remain lost, lost without knowing why, but because they don’t share the same creative origin (or ‘muse’) which sparks Nick.

Still others are compared to Nick when they share only a few of his influences - but produce something which people think they recognise as being in Nick’s … carpark. Think Mark Steiner, Nikki Sudden, Henry Hugo, David Creese, Hugo Race, Michael Plater, … hell, think Louis Tillett, Mick Harvey even.

Yet, if you take the time to listen to these folk, you discover how completely different they are. And, more often than you’d know if you believed the critics… sometimes they’re a lot better.

With a guitar sound dirtier than a mud wrestler’s crotch after a dozen championship belt rounds and 10 short, sharp songs delivered in no-nonsense and rapid succession, the debut full-length album from Brisbane punk trio Shrewms hits the Rock Action bullseye with grim accuracy.

These are high-tensile tunes delivered with lashings of gutter rock charm and despite the clever wordplay in the title, you won’t find any Westboro Baptist Church choir numbers among them. Unless the congregation has taken to gargling with paint stripper instead of fundamentalist Kool-Aid.

There is some nasty ’n’ dirty, gravel-based blues-rock ’n’ roll coming out of Sydney and nobody is doing it better than The Hollerin Sluggers. This powerhouse trio from the Northern Beaches is fucking grooving. They have all the awesome songs and guitar riffs you'll need to have you jumping around.

“The Promised Land” is a must for blues and rock enthusiasts alike. It’s a “must have” if you like slide guitar, open tuning, gritty vocals and no over-production. That’s what they recorded and that’s what you get here and - fucking hell - I can’t stop playing this.

From the first track, it’s a throwback to the great early ‘70s guitar bands. “Come Over” is the opener and what a rocker! The band is Owen Mancell (guitar and vocals), powerhouse drummer Andy Thor and Tim Cramer on bass. They’ve only been together a couple of years and this is their first album.