Holiday

About the album

Seven humble hits from Adelaide fuzz-pop wonders Hit the Jackpot. Chapter is excited, and a little bemused, to announce the release of a new cassette EP by Adelaide fuzz-pop wonders Hit the Jackpot. Excited because it’s an awesome seven track collection of humble hits, but bemused because the last time Chapter released a cassette was way back in 1996.

Hit the Jackpot’s second album Soul Money Gang Vibe was released on Chapter in 2009, and much has changed in the intervening years. The band have grown from a trio to a foursome with the addition of guitarist Stephanie Crase, an Adelaide institution for her service in such bands as Birth Glow, No Through Road and Bat- rider. However, drummer Scott O’Hara has relocated to Melbourne, making the band an interestingly complicated interstate proposition.

So most of Holiday, like Soul Money, was recorded at Jess and Kynan’s Adelaide home studio, with contributions from former drummer Sebastian Calabretto during a visit home, as he now lives in the UK.. But a few of Scott’s overdubs were recorded in Melbourne, with Jack Farley (Beaches, Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, Twerps) at the helm. Matt Banham, of Adelaide slacker-rock icons No Through Road, also co-wrote and sings on gloomy Xmas ditty I Know It’s Xmas.

In recent times, the band have played shows with the likes of Yo La Tengo (US) and Eat Skull (US), while their CV also includes supports for Sonic Youth, Calvin Johnson, Les Savy Fav, J. Mascis, Dan Deacon and Pretty Girls Make Graves. Soon, however, gigs will become even rarer, as Jess and Kyan head to the US later this year to live, after Kynan’s minor sideline as a geneticist landed him a plum research position in Philadelphia.