(Bandcamp blurb:) “I’m going up,” sings Dougal Shaw, leader of Melbourne/Naarm weirdo-punk outfit Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice. The line, which opens the group’s new single ‘Escalator Man’, seems like an accurate forecast for the band’s future, having welcomed reams of freaks and oddballs into their orbit at last week’s BIGSOUND festival.
‘Escalator Man’ amplifies the art-punk and new wave sounds that dominated Dr Sure’s recent solo mixtape, BUBBLE. The full band joins in for ‘Escalator Man’, with drummer Miranda Holt, bass player Jake Suriano, guitarist Tali Harding-Hone and synth player Mathias Dowle combining with Shaw to make a racket akin to The Fall and the looser side of Devo.
Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice will launch ‘Escalator Man’ at Naarm’s Curtin Bandroom on Saturday, 23rd September. ‘Escalator Man’ is a standalone single, but the band have teased that a third album, and follow-up to 2021’s Remember the Future? Vol. 2 & 1, is in the works.
The writing of ‘Escalator Man’ coincided with a moment of liberation for Sure, who had just endured two years of chronic anxiety. “The clouds parted and I felt weightless and ecstatic,” he said. “I wanted to bottle that feeling. I tried to write something that would charge me up with that feeling whenever I sing it.”