(Independent)

Bris indie outfit provide poetic pop via the imagination of Clinton Toghill.

Founded in London, The Bell Divers came into their own when guitarist/singer/songwriter Clinton Toghill and guitarist Matthew Lobb returned to Brisbane to turn the line-up into a quintet, specialising in clean, melodic guitar pop. There’s plenty of same to be found on the group’s excellent debut June July. Toghill possesses the kind of slightly plummy vocals one would hear all over Postcard and Flying Nun label bands in the 1980s and the record is full of appropriately chiming guitar hooks, all of which infuse the record with a great deal of chime. It’s the kind of indie music you don’t often hear these days. For a truly independent debut album, June July sounds a treat getting a crisp production job from Tim Whitten. The arrangements are subtle enough so that you hear songs becoming enriched by the additional instrumental textures added to the sounds, from pedal stell to keyboardist Melanie Smart’s piano and Hammond organ shadings. Toghill is also a dreamy, slightly surreal and blackly humorous storyteller in his lyrics. The combinations fit together like an jigsaw with an old photo of a canal. An accomplished and quietly confident debut. If there’s a criticism, it’s that title. June July? That is soooo last month (geddit?).

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MATT THROWER

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