THE GREAT EMU WAR CASUALTIES – NEW EP ‘MAL DU SIECLE’ IS OUT NOW 

You don’t expect a band called The Great Emu War Casualties to do the obvious. And so, the acclaimed Australian alt-rock band today release their new EP ‘Mal du Siecle’ – French for “sickness of the century”, a 19th century term of universal ennui that feels uncomfortably apt in 2026 – alongside arguably their most joyous ever track, ‘Groovy’.

Getting ‘Groovy’, the band play with an amphetamine rush: driving, open-road motorik rhythms accompanied by an earworm synth motive, while Saskia Clapton’s cool, feminine backing vocals intertwine around Joe Jackson’s laconic lead. His lyrics typically play between self-deprecation and surreal observations on suburban life, and ‘Groovy’ tells a typically unorthodox tale. As his opening words state, “For the seventeenth time today I declare my days of being a dick are over… but I forgot about groovy.”
 
Joe says, “When I say ‘Groovy’ I am Mike Myers as Austin Powers in my head. This song is about both the desire to and inability to change. Honesty and its difficulty. There is something toxic inside of these 3 minutes in it, hence the Liz Taylor bridge cameo. A bartender recently described my order of two gin and tonics as ‘Groovy’. Someone behind me on this train is coughing so much they might choke to death. I’m going to watch a movie.” 

Also featuring the recent single ‘Cold Food Ave’, the ‘Mal du Siecle’ EP is completed by three other new songs. Opener ‘Genie’ is intriguingly tricky-to-define: dance-punk grooviness with an undercurrent of psychedelia and battering march provided by Nepalese drummer Bibek Tamang. ‘PFA’ brings a Balearic alt-indie vibe, its otherwise meandering mellowness fast-tracked by more crushing beats. And the concluding ‘Disco’ is irresistible, as the Casualties bring their own personality to a track that lives up to previous comparisons to Two Door Cinema Club, LCD Soundsystem and Foals.
 
The Great Emu War Casualties embarked upon a trip of a lifetime to record ‘Mal du Siecle’. They left their home city of Melbourne and travelled halfway around to a studio in the borders between Joshua Tree and the Yucca Valley, overlooking the Mojave Desert. Their producer shared a similarly unpredictable streak: American-based Englishman Alex Newport, a former noise-rock/metal musician now renowned as a Grammy-nominated collaborator for Bloc Party and At The Drive In.
 

Joe adds, “We approached ‘Mal Du Siecle’ off the back of releasing the ‘Public Sweetheart No.1’ album with an aim of making a record that doesn’t sound like it’s from the same band. Aside from one verse in one song, the acoustic guitar is out. There’s a drum machine in there in places too. Instead of writing the whole thing in a Melbourne bedroom we put a lot of it together in a Californian desert. ‘Public Sweetheart No.1’ was a very introverted record whereas ‘Mal du Siecle’ is attempting to make sense of the world around it. Predictably failing but also that might be part of the point.”  
 
The British, Australian and Nepalese band have built an underground reputation in their homeland, before beginning to gain wider attention with their debut album ‘Public Sweetheart No. 1’. Now ‘Mal du Siecle’ takes their multigenre playfulness and existential facetiousness, and ramps up the energy and the fun factor.