Spice World "Purple Patch" Album Launch with The Native Cats, Troth and The Pits

Spice World are visiting Nipaluna/Hobart from Walyalup/Naarm and celebrating the release of their new record "Purple Patch" at the Grand Poobah on Friday 23 October, with...

The Native Cats

Troth

The Pits

Doors from 7pm

About Spice World "Purple Patch"

The image of a “purple patch” was immortalised by Roman poet Horace. He used the flashy textile metaphor to describe (and warn against) using ornate passages in an otherwise plain piece of writing. In modern parlance, meanwhile, the phrase usually refers to a time of unusual success or good fortune. 

Both meanings find their way, winkingly or otherwise, into describing the new record from Walyalup/Naarm-based yearners Spice World.

Good fortune was certainly at the band’s door with their debut album in 2023 - “There’s No “I” In Spice World” received widespread acclaim, appearing at #53 on Rolling Stone’s Best Australian Albums Of The 2020’s. Album track Mountain Pony 20 was named in their list of Best Australian Songs of the 21st Century. The rough-and-ready record led to national tours, international airplay and a sudden cohort of fans around the world.  

On Purple Patch, Spice World continue to prioritise an unserious and sometimes unplanned approach to placing music on the permanent record. Much of the album was recorded and mixed by Jeremy Segal in Fremantle the day after “There’s No “I” In Spice World” was released, just a few hours before the band was once again flung widely across the continent. Other songs were learned and tracked in loungerooms and bedrooms within a given afternoon. Venetians was written on the day of recording. The Price Isn’t Right features percussion played on a sharehouse chandelier - the type of detail that mingles with clarinet, flute, piano and other surprising additions to fill out the record’s scruffy sense of DIY “ornateness.”

True to Spice World’s deceptively playful style, Purple Patch also has its share of pathos and purpose. The record leans into critiques of hustle culture, progress and profiteering - and looks to the stubborn pursuit of freedom and beauty alongside. Often choosing a more pissed-off and polemical approach compared with the band’s debut, tracks like Bull’s Tools, Mercy, The Price isn’t Right and Baby’s A Bulldozer rail against the chauvinism of industry with one hand, tracing out the poetry and absurdity of daily life with the other. 

Elsewhere, the band’s devotion to pining and silliness resonate as strongly as ever. See the bittersweet jangle of single Connie or album closer Fortune Free juxtaposed with the “lesbian punk bombast” of Mean Girls; or the bright-eyed and charming Choir of Angels and I Remember Isaac, for the full spectrum of melancholy, goofiness and desire. 

Spice World is Billie Burrows, Lyndon Blue, Julia Suddenly, Rhian Todhunter and Layla Martin. They reside across Naarm and Boorloo. 

Purple Patch was recorded at Tiger's place and the Hope Street house (Walyalup, Whadjuk Boodja), and Sienna's place (Naarm, Wurundjeri Biik).

Tracks 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 recorded and mixed by Jeremy Segal. Tracks 3, 4, 9 and 11 recorded and mixed by Spice World.

All tracks mastered by Mikey Young. 

Track 9 includes a line from the poem 'Kwinana Sunset' (1995) by Ian Nichols. 

Track 11 includes lines written by Anna Savage.

Inset cover artwork by Mihaela Mîndru.

Photo by Sanche Zev. 

Album layout by Lyndon Blue. 

“Purple Patch” is set for release via Rough Skies Records on October 8. Vinyl and digital album available for pre-order now. 

https://roughskiesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/purple-patch

This event takes place on Muwinina Country. All bands pay respect to Palawa / Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the ongoing Custodians. Sovereignty never ceded.