THE NATURE STRIP
Domesticated Beast (Digital release now; physical in 2025)
YEAH, IT’S TRUE, AS ECCLISIASTES-via-The-Byrds has it, that for everything there is a season, and a time to every (musical) purpose under heaven. And Lord knows these are not the best of times for certain purposes – those featuring guitar/drums/keys in three or four minutes of vim and melody.
A week ago, I received an email from a journalism student at a local university who was writing about the continued absence of rock bands at the upper end of the charts. He basically had two questions: Is this the end, or maybe already the day after the end? Does it matter?
Now you may be a believer, as I am, in the cyclical nature of music and the likelihood that what is neglected and soon enough forgotten will at some point seem like the freshest sound or the symbol of contrariness every generation looks for. But the trendlines over the past 30 years suggest it is unlikely your regular rock ‘n’ roll, your traditional guitar pop, will ever sit at the centre of popular/musical culture again.
Does it matter? No. For a start there is no shortage of really interesting, waiting to be discovered or rediscovered, music that doesn’t require these kinds of bands. (Don’t listen to the naysayers who reckon everything good happened n their 20s.). But in any case, if you want a rock band with tunes and punch, they’re out there, and if you are lucky they’ll be as good as The Nature Strip, a Sydney four-piece with guitars, bass, drums and keyboards who didn’t get the memo about the irrelevance of guitar pop, or chose to ignore it while making their fourth album.
(A disclaimer at this point. I’ve been friends with three of these four blokes for more than 40 years, so I am not exactly a disinterested observer. But hey, no one is paying me for this review, people should hear about this record, there’s a dearth of places to find out about records, and if you don’t like this take, you’re not being harmed. So, bugger it. Read on with scepticism or interest.)
So what kind of guitar pop is this you might ask? How long have you got, answer Matt Langley, Peter Marley, John Encarnacao and Jess Ciampa.
Alongside a jaunty acoustic delicacy like King Of Trees (a morning saunter with Ian McLagan-like electric piano and a parping trombone from James Greening) and the slightly brisker, head-wobbling Baby Beast (organ swirling, harmonica harping) – a pair of mid-album songs which demand to be played in the sun – there’s the running energy of Sixth Sense (chiming guitars being chased hard by drums, barroom piano and late harmonies coo-ing for balance) and the harder edge of I Cannot Deny You (fuzzier guitars, space sounds deflecting) whose territory is more indoors, and whose tenor is more questioning.
The Cure-ish blend of tension and speculative romance in Signature Move (voices in space, tumbling furniture sounds) is reflected in the varying shades of guitar and stretched lead vocals that suggest nothing is settled here. But right next to it is the sweetly earnest The Big Chorus (glistening shards pinging in left and right channels, drums like folk hand percussion) which eases through like a ‘70s-denim-and-beards charmer.
I would love to have heard Monday (Roll The Dice Forever), its husky exuberance sliced through with some knowing experience, done by The Monkees, and while we’re in that territory I reckon Mike Nesmith would have taken the country rock intimated in Nerve Endings Fade all the way.
As good as the songs from Marley and Encarcacao are – and you’re going to enjoy the science/political/religious references in the lyrics incidentally – the gift-with-purchase is in the extra thought in the arrangements and sounds, and not just the apt brass contributions in the new version of Surgery (think proper New Wave bustle) and The Royal Cannon (which lands us in London ’66). Whether it is those guitar choices in Signature Move, the choppy back-and-forth of Wavelength that keeps listeners making small adjustments, or the way space opens up in the Ganesh-referencing, Baby Beast, it’s subtly clever work.
So, yeah, guitar pop, rock bands, the regulation business of old school forms might never hold the centre of culture again, but Domesticated Beast suggests that even on the fringe there will still be a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, and the songs with which to do them all.
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APPLE MUSIC: Listen to The Nature Strip – Domesticated Beast
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