Album Review: Turtle Skull, Being Here
It begins with the fuzz, and if you’re not reading that in your head in some kind of Morgan Freeman-esque deity-reminiscent voice, go back and read it again. It begins with the fuzz. ‘It,’ in this case, is Being Here, the front-to-back eight-song sophomore full-length from Sydney heavy psychedelic rockers Turtle Skull. It is a breakthrough in songwriting and production, carrying a warmth in that leadoff fuzz that begins the opening title-track that permeates even down through the need-to-keep-these-server-boxes-chilled highlight “It Starts With Me,” wherein the A.I. singularity takes on consciousness and destroys its gods accordingly, or the softer-delivered “Modern Mess” and “Moon and Tide” at the finish.
And tone isn’t relegated to Dean McLeod‘s guitar. Drummer Charlie Gradon‘s crash cymbal has a richer sound than some entire records. Julian Frese‘s bass is the backdrop against which Being Here‘s lush ending plays out, and Ally Gradon‘s keys/synth add to the shimmering “Into the Sun,” which in terms of lyrical philosophizing offers “Gotta get out of your head and into the sun” for your forehead-tattooing pleasure. “Into the Sun” is third on the 42-minute long-player, and by the time it arrives, the quality of its hook should be little surprise after “Being Here” and “Apathy.” The former reckons with “the moment’s isolation of being here” and the latter implores, “I want you to live it right now,” with harmony-laced arrangements from McLeod, Ally and Charlie, and over time the album further reveals its ability to tackle dark subjects without sounding bogged down by them.
To wit, “Bourgeoisie” channels Marx to skewer the comfort class, and the snare-driven march of “It Starts With Me” is like a patriotic song for the software that comes to understand, “I am what you see your life through/I could very well be the end of you,” as it moves into the chorus. “Heavy as Hell,” another highlight on an album with eight of them, bounces under its titular confession, “Heavy as hell/The stories I tell/To only myself/Heavy as hell.” Simple rhymes, executed with thoughtful melodies and a sense of wanting to communicate to the audience without talking or dumbing itself down in any way. The openness of the lyrics is relevant both for its rarity — it’s easier to write songs about monsters, and I’m not knocking that — and for the sincerity that resonates from the songs. It’s not flinching from the moment in which it lives, as “Apathy” and “It Starts With Me” examine digital culture, but “Into the Sun” and the sweetness of melody in “Modern Mess” and “Moon and Tide” remain ready fodder for escapism.
The songs’ll be stuck in your head one way or the other, so you might as well go where they take you. And in terms of band-figuring-out-who-they-are, the fact that Charlie Gradon mixed and had a hand in the recording in addition to that of Julian Abbott at Nowave Studio — Gradon and Dean McLeod are listed as producers; Michael Lynch mastered — speaks to a sense of intention behind the depth of tone and the too-active-to-be-shoegaze mellowness pervading even the most active of the material, be it the twisting “Apathy” or the shouts following the chorus of “Bourgeoisie,” with the keyboard sounding an alarm behind a fervent push.
It tells you that not only are Turtle Skull thinking about the songs they’re writing — and while not overworked, this material has been meticulously ironed-out and arranged — but about how they’re presenting them to the listener. That the recording carries such a live feel is also likely no coincidence, but the priority seems to have been in balancing that with giving the material its best representation in the studio.
Fair enough and pretty standard practice but for the exceptional results. A calm swing and snare-snap punctuate the intro to “Modern Mess,” languid and flowing in an immediate departure from “Heavy as Hell” just before. The tempo stays geared for flow, and the arrival of the vocals — the lines, “Healing a broken heart/Playing our own cruel part…” — leads the way into a purposefully entrancing immersion for the remaining 15 minutes of the LP as “Modern Mess” (6:54) and “Moon and Tide” (8:46) are the two longest songs and very much a distinct movement unto themselves. The chorus of “Modern Mess” is lush and memorable, suited to the wistful evocations of the organ line, a kind of longing hanging there in the open space of the guitar and the echo treatment on all of it as Turtle Skull put their interpretation of mellow psychedelia forth as a place for their audience to dwell.
More active in the drums, “Moon and Tide” is also more willing to ride out parts and devolves to a noisy end for the album that seems to answer back to the fuzz that begins “Being Here,” and it does this while confessing its love for, well, everybody, and “choosing to move with all of the love I have inside,” which for a record that’s been chasing serenity no less than its sundry aspirations of songwriting, is a satisfying conclusion in keeping with the heavy-hippie point of view of the lyrics generally. Between this showcase of perspective and the high level of craft throughout that makes these tracks so gosh darn listenable, Turtle Skull have answered and surpassed the promise of their 2020 debut, Monoliths (review here), and hopefully set themselves on a course of development that will continue over releases subsequent to this.
The short version is that Being Here is a creative blossoming for Turtle Skull, and from start to end is one of the best records I’ve heard in 2025. It’s the first of those two that’s more important, obviously. The way the band carry these melodies, find balance between the moodier aspects of living through one of the dumbest eras of recorded history and the hopeful manifestations that could lead to a better world, way, whathaveyou. It’s not just about wanting to “get out of your head and into the sun,” but about how Turtle Skull make that song into the sunshine itself, and the way the music from that first fuzz onward comes to feel like the greatest hopes of the lyrics realized.
Turtle Skull, Being Here (2025)
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Tags: Art as Catharsis, Australia, Being Here, Copper Feast Records, Sydney, Turtle Skull, Turtle Skull Being Here
Righteously excellent record.
The only immediate room for improvement for me would be that it was out on Stolen Body records so there was a better chance of seeing them over this way!
‘Apathy’ won me over most immediately, dig that it works for many emotional states. The rest though meets that level of mellow sunshine but not saccharine and disengaged.
Just listened to it, indeed a great record!
As usual, thanks for the heads up JJ, I’d probably missed it it wasn’t for your reccomandations.