Labels: ruined smile
Review by: Joao
This band shares members of several current Australian bands, such as the brilliant No Action and Nebraska. How they managed to put together an hour-long demo tape while living away from each other is beyond me.
The sound is similar to some 90s indie rock stalwarts such as Seam and Idaho, a bit of Codeine with some noisier bits, things like that. It ranges from quieter bits with ringing guitars to noisier parts where the bass comes crunching down, but always keeping it slow enough to make it sound somewhere in between bleak and pleasant. It’s a good trick a lot of those bands in the past knew well and that Hutt River Province hint at in here. The vocals are very subdued in the mix, and are very very hazy. Sometimes the noisier bits almost remind me a bit of Duster.
With such a long tape I cannot really tell songs apart, it all sounds like a bunch of different moments that segue into each other seamlessly. “Specially the side B, which seems to be a collection of different recordings and field recordings, which I also think might be the best side. I mean, the first bit almost sounds like Boy’s Life to me (you can call me insane, I am aware of that).
The best trick those bands I mentioned earlier had was that they managed to make music that slowly went along and all that, but were damn good song writers. While there are plenty of good things in this tape, at some points it kind of drags along a little bit. But on the other hand, I suspect that was their intention.
For me this is something you have playing in the back while you take a walk around (for some reason I always associate this type of music with summer days, but I understand that it might be different for other people “” I think it was in these parts that someone mentioned to me that you can just imagine you are inside the cover for Codeine’s Barely Real) rather than something you sit down with and listen intently to.
Interesting tape! Would be interested in listening to an album where they had spent more time writing the thing maybe, although I can see myself putting this tape on on occasion.