Rum Jungle – Recency Bias

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Released: 21st February 2025

Rum Jungle’s ‘Recency Bias’ feels like finding last summer’s festival wristband in your jacket pocket – familiar, slightly worn, and still holding onto traces of those sun-drenched memories.

The Australian outfit’s debut offering takes a few tracks to find its feet, ‘Weather’s Better’ finally introducing some proper momentum, channelling Peace-esque guitar swirls and bouncy rhythms. ‘Mad Man’ swaggers with playful confidence, while ‘Always On Your Good Side’ demonstrates a willingness to throw out conventional indie-rock structures. The real standout arrives late with ‘Backwards’, where harmonies weave through the mix to create something unexpectedly charming.

Yet, too often, these flashes of inspiration feel fleeting. ‘What’s It Like’ exemplifies this tendency to pull punches – it’s crying out for one more pass through the writing room, one more twist of the mixing desk dials.

‘Recency Bias’ isn’t a bad album by any means – it’s just that in 2025, when guitar music is experiencing such a creative renaissance, being merely good isn’t quite good enough. There are moments here that suggest Rum Jungle have more to offer, but for now, this is an album that’ll soundtrack your spring-summer afternoons perfectly well, even if it might not make it into your autumn playlist.