FORGET what you know about the Snowdroppers and prepare to meet one of the greatest rock albums of 2013. The swampy blues-rock showmen of 2007's TOO LATE TO PRAY album are transformed. "WHITE DRESS", the first track from their forthcoming MOVING OUT OF EDEN album, marks their arrival in a less stylised, more grounded set of boots. With The Peep Tempel + Cherrywood $10 + BF $15 door

"We've hit the road pretty hard in the last year or two," says singer Johnny Wishbone.

"I started feeling a real kinship with a lot of classic pub bands, from AC/DC to the

Hoodoo Gurus, Sports, Skyhooks . . . no-bullshit bands. Bands that just write great

songs and play."

The Snowdroppers' new turf is a raw mix of earthy rumble and wiry guitar riffs tied

together with the wry kitchen sink perspective of the common man. "WHITE DRESS"

is an incredibly catchy and totally unvarnished view of romance from a distinctly nofrills

kinda guy.

Echoes of classic Midnight Oil, INXS, Johnnys and the Living End are entirely

unintentional, but neither Johnny nor co-writer/ guitarist Pauly K seems surprised at

the references. You are what you eat, after all, and these guys have been chewing

up sticky carpet for the best part of ten years.

Early single "DO THE STOMP" made impact on alternative radio as well as the

soundtrack to the hit movie, RED DOG. The billowing blues harp and rockabilly slap

of the TOO LATE TO PRAY album upped the band's profile as hard players from the

Annandale Hotel and the Big Day Out to a whistle-stop US tour from Austin to LA to

New York.

But by the Sydney winter of 2011, the more ingrained Australian sound and feeling of

MOVING OUT OF EDEN had begun to form in the band's collective headspace. A

long search for prospective producers who could hear the same thing finally ended

with a Welshman, ironically enough, Richard Jackson (The Future of Left/ The

Automatic).

Between black humour and fiery passions, MOVING OUT OF EDEN is among the

most distinctive and cohesive rock records you'll hear in 2013. Stay tuned.

"WHITE DRESS" is out now to stream and download through FOUR ' FOUR / ABC

Music.