- I recently spent a good couple of days stumbling around the abyss. Blacked out moments in time, lost within a puddle of vomit and shit. Such tomfoolery breeds despair, but luckily I had this here new LP from Mordecai to drag me out and make some sense of it all.

Mordecai hails from a small town called Butte in the vast dinosaur state that is Montana, USA, and is mostly the project of one Holt Bodish. Active for a few years now, the Mordecai name has graced various other releases, including a track on the 'Wings Over Gabba' compilation from 2011, which was put together and released through Brisbane's own Negative Guest List Records. College Rock is the latest and most realised effort to date, delivering a high quality dose of deconstructed rock n roll. 12 remorseless odes to the abyss.

Songs blur into each other, speakers hiss and amps crackle. Vocals and drums sound like they're coming drunkenly from down the hallway in some tracks, then right out of your wine bottle in others. 'Sad reality' is a recurring lyric within album watermark 'Rety'. The recordings themselves even drop out from time to time, with volume levels consistently inconsistent. Everything is warped, broken and wrong. Not much care was taken to make this sound nice, and it is all the better for it. This is rock n roll after all, and Mordecai perform it with an admirable post apocalyptic abandon. College Rock is a record void of pretention that oozes real character, and a modern character at that. It's a sheer joy to absorb, and will comfort many a down and outer stumbling in and out of the abyss. Out on the excellent Richie Records, leading purveyors of high quality slop.

- Matt Kennedy.