Extra Time - Graham Avenue

Extra Time

Graham Avenue
​self-released; 2020

3.8 out of 5

By Jamie Funk

Extra Time is a new Australian rock band and recently released their debut entitled Graham Avenue. Their release is a double album's worth of material and contains a whopping nineteen songs.

Their music is a lot of things but mostly falls under the umbrella of rock. Some of the songs are jazzy, others feel a little more blues based and others feel like atmospheric rock in the spirit of Pink Floyd.

The band explains regret, betrayal, life, death, sickness, wealth, the future, the past and the planet are themes and try and bring their own personal experience to those subjects. You can clearly hear this through fairly heavily philosophical lyrics on “Perfect Kiss.” The song has this crystal clear type of quality like it's refined. You can clearly hear what I’m referring to on the piano solo.

Out of the nineteen songs I felt there are some highlights including “Find Me A River” and “Things Left Unsaid.” “Things Left Unsaid” in particular pours on a lot of heavier and deep concepts such as regret.

The band can also provide some levity with “Look Forward To” at least in terms of the music. I enjoyed the rocking grooves on this song especially towards the beginning of the song. “Peace of Mind” is a very lush sounding song. It's motivational however in a lot of ways when you listen to the music. Another highlight was the fun and David Bowie-esque “What Happened To” which contains some fantastic drum work,

My only critique would be the sheer length of the album. For a debut album nineteen songs felt like a bit of an overload especially dealing with heavier topics. They could have split this release into two albums which I think would have been a little more effective.

​Overall, this is a cohesive and impressive debut. The band has all around impressive talent and I felt they did a good job creating a cohesive, signature sound.

youtube

official website

Tweet