(Popfrenzy)

Music from a different time and place

It’s a shame that Sydney’s Songs weren’t able to embark on a planned tour with Brisbane’s I Heart Hiroshima, as for my money, despite their obvious musical differences, both acts succeed by sounding nothing at all like any other band currently making music in Australia, and certainly like nothing you’ll hear on the national youth broadcaster, our inaccurately-described ‘alternative’ station. Songs are indeed a sum of influences from the ‘70s through to ‘90s, but nothing terribly vogue-ish, which gives them a distinct edge. Across their self-titled debut’s 10 tracks you’ll hear the Velvet Underground, Neu!, Go-Betweens, The Fall, Stereolab, NZ south island acts like The Clean, The Bats … even Sydney’s brilliant The Moles. It has within its Casey Rice (Dirty Three, Sea & Cake)-produced length moments of pop clarity and chiming guitars, lyrics delivered with directness and deadpan humour, chugging krautrock relentlessness and dream-pop shine – all things that in isolation have carried albums, but in Songs’ case the elements form part of an absorbing mosaic (by extension, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the still-life cover photograph of various cheeses as a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle). Frontman Max Doyle, a 44 year-old photographer and magazine editor, sings on Farmacy and It Doesn’t Exist with the seasick pitch-shifting of a nasal Mark E. Smith or Kiwi Shaun Ryder, contrasting perfectly with the hummingbird sweetness of bassist Ela Stiles on songs like Retreat and Clouds. The simple guitar melody of Pain and the swirling organ of It’s Dry provide apt platforms for modest but effective experiments with harmonies and reverb, and the tight motorik rhythm of My Number creates a backdrop for dramatic closure. It somehow feels slightly out of step, anti-fashion, but in the best possible way – too melodic for the DIY hipsters, not dumb enough for the radio, almost otherworldly thanks to it’s cross-generational, trans-national extraction. For a band with the audacity to be named Songs, it’s an impressive and memorable result.

****½

TOPHER HEALY