The Weekend Australian album reviews, February 2014: Warpaint, Halfway, Harmony
Album reviews published in The Weekend Australian in February 2014.
++
The music made by the four members of Los Angeles indie rock act Warpaint rarely contains hard edges.
Usually, it’s the stuff of film dream sequences: ethereal, emotive and somewhat divorced from reality. This wistful aesthetic worked well on the band’s 2010 debut The Fool, and still does four years later.
But it’s the seventh of 12 tracks here, ‘Disco//Very’, that’s most immediately striking. Powered by Jenny Lee Lindberg’s busy bassline and drummer Stella Mozgawa’s intricate cymbal-and-snare pattern, its opening lyric almost works as a band mission statement: “I’ve got a friend with a melody that will kill/ She’ll eat you alive.”
These four are masters of mood and melody, and Warpaint is a fine document of that fact. Three years in the making, it’s an engrossing listen from the wordless opening track, ‘Intro’, right through to its plaintive closer, ‘Son’.
First single ‘Love Is to Die’ is an instant earworm on par with The Fool single ‘Undertow’ in terms of sheer accessibility. As before, vocals are shared among Lindberg and guitarists Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman. In Australian-born Mozgawa the band possesses one of rock’s finest drummers, yet they’re not above paring back the percussion, as evidenced on sparse penultimate track ‘Drive’.
It is to Warpaint’s credit that their second album is full of interesting and accomplished experiments rather than the comparatively simple emulation of initial success. While it is well worth the four-year wait, here’s hoping the band’s work ethic speeds up a little before the next release. Warpaint comes highly recommended.
LABEL: Remote Control
RATING: 4 stars
++
Eight players make up Halfway, a rock band from Brisbane that injects banjo, pedal steel guitar, piano and mandolin into the genre’s usual instrumentation.
The central lyrical theme on Any Old Love is evident in the title: almost all of the 13 tracks are love songs in one shape or another. Whether it’s the exploration of that emotion in its nascent stages (‘Honey I Like You’) or towards the end of a difficult relationship (‘Hard Life Loving You’), the prose is never less than honest and true.
So, too, are the razor-sharp melodies conjured by these eight men, particularly album opener ‘Dropout’, a ludicrously catchy instant-classic that is at once familiar and unique. In a departure from the shared duties observed on 2010’s excellent An Outpost Of Promise, almost all of these songs are credited to John Busby, who shares vocals with fellow guitarist Chris Dale.
Both possess soft, distinctive voices that sit snugly amid their bandmates’ driving groove. There is depth to the stories told here, too: “Bar stories and cautionary tales on the Central Western Line”, reads a subtitle in the liner notes, referring to the 780km Queensland railway system that runs from the state’s Emerald to Hughenden.
There’s even a helpful glossary that lists 13 terms and names mentioned in the lyrics; clearly, a lot of thought has gone into this album, the band’s fourth. Any Old Love marks another accomplished entry into the growing catalogue of one of Australia’s best rock bands.
LABEL: Plus One
RATING: 4.5 stars
++
“I know I smell like petrol; smell like I’ve been sleeping rough / Like I’ve got on everything I own, no matter what the heat.”
An ominous spoken-word piece by Cold Chisel songwriter Don Walker, ‘The Closing of the Day’, is as memorable as album openers come. Accompanied by a lone guitar looping spectral notes, its function as calm-before-storm is perfectly executed.
It leads right into ‘Water Runs Cold’, where the bass and drums make their first appearance and, within a minute, Harmony’s secret weapon cuts in: the stirring vocals of Amanda Roff, Quinn Veldhuis and Erica Dunn, which provide stark contrast to the full-throated roar favoured by guitarist and lead vocalist Tom Lyngcoln.
It’s this juxtaposition of femininity and masculinity that first proved compelling on the Melbourne band’s self-titled debut album in 2011. On Carpetbombing, they’ve sharpened their songwriting. The result is a potent collection of bleak, beautiful songs that can be atonal at times, awash in dissonant chords and clattering cymbals. It’s in these moments that the gospel-style vocals are deployed like a floodlight into a pitch-black cavern. The effect is used sparingly, however; Harmony is far from a one-trick pony.
Highlights include the peculiar, push-and-pull rhythm of ‘Diminishing Returns’, which concludes with a cutting guitar solo by Lyngcoln, and the six-minute epic ‘Unknown Hunter’, which may be the band’s most remarkable piece of work.
Carpetbombing is not an easy listen. Its unique charm requires some immersion before being properly appreciated, and its unconventional song structures continue to surprise long after that uncertain first listen.
LABEL: Poison City Records
RATING: 4 stars
While Perth act Tame Impala has been flying the flag for Australian psychedelic rock since 2010, playing on American talk shows and at nearly every festival in the world, Adelaide quartet Wolf & Cub have been quiet.
As frontman of Perth-born pop act The Panics, Jae Laffer is well regarded for his songwriting quantity and quality.
New work by one of Australia’s most distinctive guitarists is always worth a listen, and usually worth dwelling on at some length.
‘Yorta Yorta’, the opening track of this Sydney band’s debut album, is one of the most striking songs released this year.
Washington 
Ben Folds/Nick Hornby 
Beware artists who tag themselves “art rock”. Which is exactly where Brisbane quartet Drawn From Bees positioned themselves with the release of their first EP, The Boy And The Ocean, in late 2008. They’ve since adhered to an admirable work ethic that’s seen them write, record and self-release material every six months under their own label, Bonefinger Records. Fear Not The Footsteps Of The Departed is their first full-length.
Die! Die! Die! – Form
The Boat People – Dear Darkly