Music

Energetic pop-blues act The Swamp Stompers have been finding popularity lately, meeting and opening for Kasey Chambers, earning encouragement from the likes of The Black Sorrows’ Joe Camilleri and having their song ‘Shadows On The Wall’ get added to a Triple J Spotify playlist with tracks of the band being played four times on the station. Recently stopping off at Mount Blackheath to perform EP-opener ‘Wishing I Had You’ in popular folk artist Andie Isalie’s van for the YouTube series ‘Vandie’, amongst completing 55 Aussie shows across 3 tours with 10 festival dates, members Corey Legge, Luke Litgenberg and Oli Morley-Sattler (Paperhill) somehow found time to record the six soulfully modern tracks that make up their Shadows On The Wall EP. 

With all three members each writing tracks that appear on the album, a varied amount of stylistic shifting happily keeps things interesting for the duration of the release. Kicking off proceedings by shooting into the hard-driving hop of ‘Wishing I Had You’ with a nimble guitar riff from Legge, the group are quick to vamp into four on the floor bop and boogie with a searing six-string solo halfway through, finally stripping the dance-floor riff down to smoulder into an acoustic ending. Following with their darkly grooving title track, the trio’s hooky chorus seems strangely reminiscent of the melancholic vocal pop of Crowded House’s Finn brothers. Morley-Sattler’s coastal rock ballad ‘Wave’ allows room for some reflective downtime amongst spacey slide flourishes, before Legge’s ‘Hey’ and Litgenberg’s ‘I’ll Finish You Boy’ gear things up again to honour the swampy rock stomp of which this band’s name derives, produced in an airtight, light and crisp way by Corduroy Spaceship. A hopeful new voice for heartfelt roots music.@theswampstompers

Morley-Sattler, Legge, Litgenberg (L-R) above

Words by Corin Shearston - band photo by Andie Isalie