Pop Filter - CONO (2023)

CONO is the third album from Pop Filter, a band of friends whose strong bonds stretch across multiple cities. Coming 3 years after the band’s last offering, 2020's 'Donkey Gully Road', the band return with an album recorded over a few months in mid 2022. Where the first two albums were recorded on weekends away in condensed periods of time, CONO was the product of weekly meet ups, of whoever could make it along to their makeshift studio in an industrial estate in Coburg North (also where the album takes its name). The band squeezed together in the tiny room and pieced together the tracks over hot chips. The result is an album that is unashamedly honest and full of off the cuff charm and low key pop brilliance.

Lyrically the album picks up where Donkey Gully Road left off, exploring place, isolation, purpose, and lack thereof. Pop Filter aren't a band pretending to be anything more or less than what they are. The songs are reflective and sincere, but manage to never feel self indulgent.

Musically Pop Filter are more open than they have ever been, varying levels of fidelity and musical stylings culminate on an album that still feels cohesive and sequenced. A low key voice memo on a mobile phone sits alongside a snappy garage pop strummer, before the instrumentation opens up into sparse country tinged balladry.

After enduring the longest period of time that this prolific group of friends has probably ever gone without releasing new material, you‘ve waited long enough for this one. Savour it!