Melbourne One More Weekend - Connor Dougan (vocals), Leith Dougan (bass), Tim Aslett (guitar), Jayson Riley (drums) are back with Aunty Meredith, a single that combines a blistering alt-rock sound with a delirious story. The song immerses you in a whirlpool of distorted guitars and beating rhythms since the first bars and expertly accompanies the entire psychedelic journey of euphoria to existential dread.
The vocals of Connor are the key: gritty, aggressive, full of primal passion as he performs the main theme of the song: the razor blade between freedom and self-destruction. This tension is perfectly reflected in instrumentation. The riffs of Aslett swing between the anthemic majesty and the gnarled dissonance, whereas the bass lines of Leith resemble a serpent slithering under the pounding of drums of Riley. It is a guitar fest in the literal meaning of the word, but it never loses its melody to power, and with the precision of a hook, it incorporates its chaos.
The music video is about a person sucked into a dark world by Aunty Meredith. The story starts with the protagonist waking up at an unfamiliar party where a drink takes him into an eerie mood of trance like people. At first reluctantly, he finds his way to this strange environment and gets conducted into a forest, where he takes part in weird rituals. He finally gives in to temptation and joins the cult in full force. The video ends with his indoctrination when he is made to dance with the group in a ritualistic dance step as he is fully absorbed into the world of Aunty Meredith.
The dynamic editing creates seamless transitions between the band's performance and the surrounding scenes, elevating Aunty Meredith's visual narrative from a rock anthem to a multi-sensory experience. The most striking thing is the authenticity of the band. One More Weekend has honed their craft on over 200 stages across Australia, and the lived-in urgency here is a mix of the Foo Fighters stadium-ready grit and the atmospheric depth of The Getaway Plan. It is a risky development of what they did before and it shows how they have an ability to turn personal angst into collective release.
