I feel like such a traitor... Australian bands at last!

Play A Part
By Expatriate

I can't believe I haven't had any Australian bands on here yet! (Well, aside from Dave McCormack). Anyway, Expatriate are a Melbourne band that released an awesome EP with a kickass song called "Killer Cat" and another one called "Spaces Between". However, when they came to release their album, they decided to cut killer cat! Bastards! I think its kind of an Australian band thing, similar things happened with Eskimo Joe (Ruby Wednesday) and British India (Revolver, I think)... It could be bands just get sick of their clumsy first songs, but I think in this case it's because they were aiming for a kinda theme on their album. It kinda works, but it does make some of the songs a little samey.

Hurricane
By Faker

Faker were one of my favorite Australian bands of the last 2 years. Their first album was entirely kickass, and they also did one of the best live shows I've seen. I was pretty lucky actually, they had a festival thingy in the valley, where a whole bunch of my favorite Aus bands played including Faker, Expatriate, The Grates and Wolf & Cub, plus Canadian band The New Pornographers. It was a bad ass lineup.
The flipside of this tho, is that the other 2 times I've seen them they were nowhere near as good. I haven't heard all of their new album (Esta's going to send it to me...) but what I've heard is still pretty good. There are too many other good songs to list here at the moment, but I might get around to some more some other time.

Tales From The Forest Of Gnomes
By Wolfmother

Wolfmother blew me away about 3 years ago. Their 4 track EP was the most rocking thing I had heard for a long time. But then they went and recorded their album and lost a lot of their roughness and simplicity. The album was still hit after hit tho (I'd rank it up there with the strokes first album in such that every song on it is pretty solid).
They are kind of a funny band in the way they divide people. I mean normally, you either like a band, or you don't, and Wolfmother has some pretty ardent haters. But also, the people that like them are split between those that liked them from the EP and those that like them from the album.
I saw them at BDO 2 years ago, and beforehand, I was really excited about it. I headed deeeeep into the moshpit, and then disaster, there was some technical issues and they couldn't get the electrics to work. The crowd started to get pissed, and people who were there for the following bands started to pick fights with the Wolfmother fans, and then Wolfmother fans started to pick fights with other Wolfmother fans. And then more people tried to pour into the mosh. It was hell. Luckily, the band started playing eventually, but the feeling had well been lost. I still like them though...
Also, I picked this song because I thought it might remind you of your gnome days in WOW...