Sticky Fingers - Westway (The Glitter & The Slums) (LP)

Westway (The Glitter & The Slums) lands like the moment a band grows into its own myth. Sticky Fingers had already built a cult off pub shows, festival singalongs, and a scrappy blend of indie rock, dub, and psych. Then this third album arrived on 30 September 2016 through Sureshaker, and it went straight to number one on the ARIA Albums Chart. That chart crown did not come from hype alone. It came from songs that hit hard in small rooms and on big stages, and from a band that knew exactly how to bottle their late night energy.

You can hear the lineup clicking into place. Dylan Frost’s voice is smoky but melodic, the sort of drawl that can sound hungover and tender in the same line. Paddy Cornwall’s bass is the secret engine, rolling and rubbery, never showy, always driving. Freddy Crabs’ keys add that woozy glue, while Seamus Coyle’s guitar slides between chiming jangle and hazy psych leads. Beaker Best holds it all together with a beat that keeps one foot in reggae and the other in Britpop swagger. The style mix is old news for long time fans, but here it locks in with a tightness that feels earned.

What makes Westway stick is how it balances grit and gloss. The hooks are big, almost radio clean at times, but the edges are still scuffed. There is a lived in mood to these tracks, the sound of songs written after too many 3 a.m. mornings and a few too many confessions. It is not a sloppy record. It just sweats. The choruses go wide, yet the verses keep the lights low. That push and pull turns into a kind of tension you can feel in your chest.

Outcast At Last is the cleanest example of their trick. It moves with a steady pulse, the bass walking in circles while the guitar nicks at the edges. When the chorus opens up, it sounds like a deep breath after a long night. It is an easy setlist highlight and one of the album’s most replayable moments. You can hear why it stuck with fans. Across the record, the band leans into melodies you can shout back at them, but they resist the sugar rush. The grooves do the heavy lifting, and the production keeps enough space for the rhythm section to bloom.

Context matters with this band, and Westway arrived at a peak in their grassroots rise. It was their third studio album, the one that followed Caress Your Soul and Land of Pleasure, both big in the world of Aussie indie and Triple J diehards. Those earlier records gave us singalongs like Australia Street and Gold Snafu. This one feels tighter and a notch moodier, like a late chapter in the same story with better lighting. Australian press wrote plenty about the number one debut, but the real tell was how these songs lived on playlists, share houses, and festival fields well after release week.

Spin it on wax if you can. The low end hums warmer, the keys melt into the guitars, and Frost’s vocal sits just forward enough to keep the lyrics close. Westway (The Glitter & The Slums) vinyl is one of those shop floor staff picks that makes instant sense when the needle drops. If you are flipping through Sticky Fingers vinyl at your local Melbourne record store, this is the spine that will make you stop. And if you buy Sticky Fingers records online, put this near the top of the cart. It is a keeper alongside the other Sticky Fingers albums on vinyl, the kind you pull out for friends who think they know the band but have only skimmed the hits. It even sits well in a stack of vinyl records Australia wide, the sort of record that ties a shelf together with a story about where you first heard it.

Years later, Westway still feels like a snapshot of a band at full tilt, writing big choruses without sanding off their rough touch. It is not reinventing their wheel. It is spinning it faster, on better tires, down a longer road. If you came to Sticky Fingers for the groove, you will stay for how the songs ache. If you came for the singalongs, there are plenty. That is why this album keeps creeping back onto turntables. It sounds like a Saturday that started on Friday and never quite ended, which is exactly the mood a great rock record should catch and keep.