* PREORDER * MICHAEL BEACH - Live At Phoenix Central Park LP

* PREORDER * expected to arrive 30th July

We've been fortunate to hear an advance and yes, it's highly recommended.

On his debut live LP, Melbourne-based/ California-born bandleader Michael Beach brings together three of Australia’s most well-known improvisers in a mercurial performance that is both contemplative and expansive, focused and fierce. Playing live together for the first time, the band - Lloyd Swanton (The Necks), Joe Talia (Oren Ambarchi, Ned Collette), and Mick Turner (Dirty Three, Venom P Stinger) - supercharge Beach’s textural songwriting, and tap immediately into a propulsive cosmic pulse.

Known as a deliberate and masterful songwriter, adept in both guitar-based post-punk (recalling Peter Laughner, Pere Ubu) and off-kilter piano balladry (Bill Fay, Peter Jefferies), Beach focuses on the latter as a jumping-off point for Live at Phoenix.  “My last couple of records were dotted with more reflective moments, and friends had been encouraging me for a while to put together a whole record of ballads,” says Beach.

Recorded in Sydney on the final date of a busy 2025. In the architecturally and acoustically designed space of Phoenix Central Park, surrounded on all sides by a hushed and reverent audience, the band immediately settles into a meditative mood, with Beach peeling fragments from the grand piano as “Introduction” segues into a dramatic reworking of “Societal Breakdown” (Beach’s one song on guitar), recalling Townes Van Zandt or Rowland S. Howard.  “No One Knows Any Better” ends side A with the record's first crescendo, the Talia/Swanton rhythm section locked in from repetition to transcendence.  Side B opens with “I’m Gonna Need Ya”, then boils over into a cover of “Calvary Cross” by Richard Thompson. An eight-minute version of Big Black Plume fan favorite “The Sea” (elevated by the addition of Swanton’s oceanic bass tones) crescendos the record again, and “Only a Memory,” ends the record with the entire band at their most emotive.