Originally from Brisbane, and recently re-located to Durham, there’s a good chance you already know Laura Kovic, from her time, as she puts it, “playing keyboards in other people’s bands”. Searching for an outlet for her own songwriting, Laura bought a guitar, overcame writers block and formed Fortitude Valley, named after the heart of the Brisbane music scene, or what was the heart some thirteen years ago when Laura moved to the UK. Recruiting something of a super-group to make her musical dreams become reality, Laura has teamed up Daniel and Nathan from Martha and ONSIND, and Greg from Night Flowers. Today we’re sharing the band’s debut single, Wreck.

With the eclecticism of Laura’s other musical projects, it wasn’t particularly obvious what her own songwriting would end up sounding like. On Wreck, citing influences from The Beths to The Pixies, the sound is one of deliciously driving indie-pop, or in their own words, “awkward power-pop”. The track enters on an easy strum of guitar and Laura’s instantly compelling lyric, “it’s in the silence that I start to fall apart, I hate the way you’re running rings around my heart”. From there the rhythmic hum of bass and drums crashes into place along with a wonderfully meandering lead-guitar line.

Lyrically, Wreck seems to be a musing on diving in head first and taking risks, as Laura sings, “I’m throwing caution to the wind, I don’t know how it will end”. Even when well aware of the risks, “I’m a wreck, this could kill me, I should quit while I’m ahead”, there’s still an undercurrent of reckless abandon, “if I don’t play, there’s no way I can win“. The freedom is equally present in the instrumental breaks, where the guitars ramp up the bombast to new levels of brilliant.

Wreck represents the first taste of a brand new Fortitude Valley album due next year, so we’re expecting to hear an awful lot more of this lot in 2020; on this evidence that’s something well worth celebrating.

Wreck is out December 6th via Fika Recordings. Click HERE for more information on Fortitude Valley.

Fortitude Valley play their first ever show on January 10th as part of The Winter Sprinter at The Lexington with The Just Joans and Seazoo. Click HERE for more information.