Sydney-based garage-pop group Party Crashers have released their self-titled debut album and will celebrate with a handful of local shows.
The band is led by Robert F Cranny, supported by Straight Arrows’ Owen Penglis and his Peachfiled bandmates Gillian Watts and Laetitia Michel Shepherd. Cranny has been a respected songwriter and producer for more than two decades, and is best known for his work with Sarah Blasko on her debut album The Overture And The Underscore, and its follow-up What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have. Cranny co-wrote and co-produced both albums, the latter winning the ARIA award for Best Pop Release in 2007 and both achieving platinum status in Australia.
Party Crashers recorded the album in two days at Sydney’s Golden Retriever Studios, doing so to two-inch tape through vintage ’70s Neve mic preamps. Half of the ten songs can trace their origins to Cranny, Shepherd and Gillian Watts’ time together in Peachfield.
“I was trying to live out this Don Walker fantasy where I would write the songs, other people would flesh them out and sing them and I’d be the anonymous dude up the back playing piano,” says Cranny of that band.
“After COVID subsided, we found ourselves with half a band and no vocalist. The task of building up another six-piece band was just too daunting. We tried to find a singer but I was already circling the revelation that that I should just sing the things myself.”
Party Crashers will show off the album at two shows this weekend – the first being at Glengerry Castle Hotel on Saturday from 6pm. It’s been described as a “secret warm-up show” and “the first leg of a much-anticipated world tour of Redfern.” On Sunday they’ll be playing The Sunday Wash-Up at another local pub, The Dock.
The official album launch will be on Friday, May 2nd at the Golden Barley Hotel in Enmore – you can find out more details here.
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Party Crashers is out now via Bandcamp, streaming services, and Amrap.
