We’re thrilled to announce that The Clueless Hitchhiker, the new album from Clairaudience, is now available on vinyl and CD — and will be streaming everywhere from Monday 27 April. It’s been a long road to this record. Clairaudience was formed in Sydney’s inner west in 2006 by Daniel and Caroline Jumpertz, who ran it as the house band of their Feral Media label, a partnership that’s always been as much about life as music. After winning Green Card residency in the lottery, Daniel and Caroline relocated to New York City in 2010, building a new chapter of the band that played the Northside Festival, Make Music New York, and iconic venues like The Bitter End in Greenwich Village and Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn. Their 2015 mini-album/cassette Sun Damage (described by Atwood Magazine as “a psychedelic dream full of jangling guitars and a Phil Spector-like Wall of Sound”) and the 2016 self-titled full-length (featuring the Spotify favourite Being Bad) were both recorded with producer Abe Seiferth at Transmitter Park Studios in Greenpoint.

Exclusively pressed in Australia to Heavyweight Red and Yellow handpour, with Impressed’s signature Obi strip – individually numbered 1/50. $59.99 Link to shop

After returning to Australia and settling in Melbourne, Daniel and Caroline recruited a new lineup between the 2020–21 lockdowns: Daniel’s brother Mick Jumpertz on bass, and Daniel’s lifelong musical partner Chris Smales on guitar, a friendship spanning over 50 years. Rehearsals began in a North Melbourne basement, and what emerged is the most personal and fully realised Clairaudience record yet. The album was tracked at the iconic Melbourne studio Head Gap with Rohan Sforcina, mastered by William Bowden, and the vinyls pressed at Program Records.

The Clueless Hitchhiker is a meditation on modern dislocation — the atomisation of society into tribes, the paradox of connection and loneliness, and the quiet struggle to stay present in a world that keeps moving without you. The album’s title and cover image, the hitchhiker drifting through life without agency or destination, runs through all ten songs, from We Move Amongst The Tribes to the album’s closer What We’ve Become. The band’s sound weaves together influences from The Velvet Underground, Television, Sunnyboys and The Go-Betweens into something distinctly and defiantly their own: resolute, visceral, melodic, and shot through with unexpected light.

Exclusively pressed in Australia at Program records. Heavyweight black vinyl. Includes lyric sheet / poster insert + digital download code. $35. Feral Media Bandcamp

Lovely gatefold card case, artwork by Daniel Jumpertz. 24-page booklet with full liner notes, lyrics and single artworks. Includes bonus Pavement cover “Give It A Day” + digital download code. Feral Media Bandcamp