THE WELLINGTONS – BABY MOON; BLACKBIRDS FC – DESIRE LINES; ALCOTOMIC – 8 SECOND EMPIRE: REVIEW
- Bernard Zuel
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
THE WELLINGTONS
Baby Moon (Popboomerang)
BLACKBIRDS FC
Desire Lines (blackbirdsfc)
ALCOTOMIC
8 Second Empire (Small Sanctuary Records)
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INEXPLICABLY, NOT EVERYONE LIKES guitar pop. Some people hear guitar and drums and a big hook and switch off; some hear a jangle and harmony and consign the offending material to history’s dusty back pages (though not Dylan’s My Back Pages, made into jangly pop in 1967 by The Byrds); some just don’t want to know and won’t even start with this old man shit.
To paraphrase a bloke who is similarly one-eyed about a lot of things, I recognise that many people have made that decision, but given that it’s a stupid-ass decision I’ve elected to ignore it. Ignore it three times (though not Dead Cat 3 Times, or DCX3, which, as much as Grinspoon knew their way around a pop song, doesn’t really qualify as guitar pop for reasons we need not go into here), with these three new albums.
Still reading? For those who have not yet abandoned ship, the territory today is geographically focused, with two Melbourne bands and one from Sydney; chronologically scattered, with one album a month in, one out next Thursday, and one due in a few weeks; and stylistically varied, within the relatively broad definition I’m going with.
The most exuberant of the three is Baby Moon from The Wellingtons, the sixth album from a four piece whose last record was back in the horror show of the first Trump administration, but who sound as if they discovered a secret seam of energy that might help us all survive the apocalypse of the second. The hard smack of the drums a few seconds into Always Gonna Be That Girl, the sheets of guitars in She Still Loves Me, the heavy strum and wooh-oohs of I Won’t Turn Away, and the tumbling roll of The Long Goodbye, all come charged. There’s momentum in them, dragging you along like your kid who has just discovered this AMAZING thing you HAVE to see RIGHT NOW.
Zac Anthony’s nasal tones retain the right amount of whine, balanced firstly by lyrics which deal with things that aren’t child’s play, from mature love and actual children to fresh love and death, and then the contrasting-enough tone of Kate Goldby, who when taking the lead throws some ruggedness into a track like the swaggering sugar of Sad Today and pulls that back to something vulnerable-but-not-weak in Not Ready To Give Up. Add to these the chime-and-drag of Better Me, which has the gleam of Los Angeles power pop, and the shimmer stomp of The Things I Did Before, and The Wellingtons feel like an antidote and a vaccine in one bright shot.
Blackbirds FC cheekily (for those already casting ageist aspersions) offer 1991 With The Bullet mid-album and dare you not to join in with the let’s go to bed-ish handclaps, the memories of things not being like they were when you were 21 and a blend of wistfulness and wariness. But June Day, sharper-toned guitars and rolling drums, positively vibrates with a reminder that memories aren’t always going to sink, and Maps Will Be Burned subtly muscles up and contains a lyrical bite.
If their previous work has leant more towards country/rock, on Desire Lines this six-piece embrace pop principles, whether it be the tinkling keyboards in Lake Of Stars, the skinny tie bounce of What’s The Half-Life Of Loving You? or the Grant McLennan antecedents so clear in How Long?.
Also helping is that like The Wellingtons, Blackbirds play with the compare/contrast of male and female voices, with Jeremy Gronow and Gina Hearnden not so much calling-and-responding as bouncing back and forth, and Hearnden’s lead on Rings Around The Sun finds a way to feel relaxed and concerned at the same time in a song that might be called dreamy (the coo-ing of the backing vocals and lowdown keyboard, as much as the cello) if it wasn’t hiding an edge.
Alcotomic – not, as you might have thought, the boozy brother of tennis-playing Bernard, but a classic three-piece power format back after a 20-year absence – come out of the blocks with intentions clear from songwriter/singer John Freeman Baxter.
Sunshine mixes thick we’ve-heard-Beach Boys backing vocals and Jay Pinfold’s tub-thumping drums, Bridges is an opener with a surprise sax and pushy beat to its light noise, and the skinny-hipped Seventeen and the heavier Hanging Out complete the bracket with a ‘90s sound that might have slept under the Glebe Point Bridge but revels in the kind of richness in the voices that bassist Doug Lee Robertson has brought to his other gig, The Icecream Hands (a band whose influence is evident in The Wellingtons).
From this point on, the darker lyrical character of Tom Lee Park and the moments of sense-beating-desire in Complicated are more shadings on the still-sunny tunes wrapped around them, while the straightforwardness of Ruby Shoes finds its contrast in the vocal layers, Alcotomic not breaking left or right but enjoying the front-facing fun of singing over the revolutions of spinning guitars.
It's a bit of a shock when the album finishes, its 10 tracks coming in like a hit-and-run as only three of them get past the three-minute mark, and hitting repeat feels inevitable. Clever move.
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