Smaller Servings
Holly Miranda, Richard in Your Mind & more
Featuring: Traps, Dick Diver, Emma Russack, Miniature Submarines, Holly Miranda, My Disco, The Box Rockets, Richard in Your Mind
Written by: Steve Scully
Published: Mar 4th '10
Traps – ‘Standard Life’
Crunching, ‘angular’ guitars and attitude make for a little bit of a post-punk gem here from the Sydneysiders, Traps. It mightn’t have the hooks to really find its way swimming next to La Roux or Mumford in the repressed areas (it’s tough to admit, but some songs just get stuck there, for better or worse) of the mind, and the production might be a little on the tinny side, but something about it just works in that pleasantly angry sort of way.
Dick Diver – Arks Up EP
Diver has a home-grown appeal that really comes to the fore here. His basic, heavily-accented and lightly-melodic vocals mix with harmonised guitar riffs and a whole lot of simple, basic musicianship. ‘Walk For Room’ ambulates along (rightly so), ‘Princes’, an instrumental not too dissimilar from those the Meat Puppets belted out in their day, picks up the pace slightly. A solid effort, without anything outstanding, Arks Up stands behind The Drones in the line of purveyors of the uniquely Australian rock dirge, but Diver sits back on some conservative chord progressions to make it a little more accessible, but just that little bit less remarkable.
Emma Russack – Peasants EP
She’s very young to be so damn soulful, this Emma Russack. Sounding like an antipodean Chan Marshall, she follows in the footsteps of other Australian zeitgeisters, Kid Sam and Middle East perhaps, in creating haunting ballads that, while they might not grab you on first listen, really do demand attention. A slightly playful side seeps in with ‘By The Shore’ and ‘Sex On the Beach’, but Russack’s strength lies in her subtlety and ear for quiet, morose melodies, such as ‘Autumn’ and ‘Do U Think Of Me’.
Miniature Submarines – ‘The Little Room Under The Stairs’
Discordant, fairly apocalyptic stuff, ‘The Little Room Under The Stairs’ possesses the thematic subtlety of a Clint Eastwood movie. The lyrics are dead-set shocking (“I miss you like I miss a hole in my head/Ever get the feeling that we’d all be better off dead/I’m having trouble getting out of bed”), but the guitars are grungy, wailing and altogether well-struck. Let’s not beat around the bush, though: this is a tedious foray into kitsch-gothic blandness.
Holly Miranda – ‘Forest Green Oh Forest Green’
There’s a storm brewing beneath Miranda’s gorgeous little track. Part pastoral folk, part eccentric indie pop, ‘Forest Green Oh Forest Green’ has some truly beautiful moments – the rambling horns and sporadic harmonies a couple of these – but it’s the harsh synth hum beneath the songs lightness that adds gravity here. This could be the first glimpse of someone very special.
My Disco – ‘Young’
My Disco lives in a world where post rock actually took off and became a dominant art form. Their epic instrumental arrangements are truly something else in the live arena (where they can stand toe-to-toe with anyone) but recordings-wise, it just gets a little old and repetitive. ‘Young’ has a welcome break-down halfway through, but there just isn’t the mind-boggling precision and meticulousness of the best post-rock groups such as Mogwai or Mono.
The Box Rockets – Throwing Stones EP
The Box Rockets have come a long way since their debut tracks crossed this desk – they’ve honed their sound into incredibly palatable and accomplished retro-rock, with some very clean production and some precise guitar and vocal work complementing the melody-centric tracks. More honing is needed, perhaps, as they do mix-and-match genres a fair bit even on this release (dabbling in old-school rock with ‘I Want To’, reggae with ‘Walk On’ and a post punk anthemic bent on ‘Heart’s On My Sleeve’), but there’s enough here to suggest that they might have realised that their strengths lie in the traditional ‘guitar rock’ aesthetic.
Richard In Your Mind – Summertime EP
Summery, Custom Kings-like appeal abounds in this, Richard In Your Mind’s first label-driven release. The EP is for the most part a light, carefree affair, encompassing indie hip hop and R’n’B homages (piss-takes?) and nice little electro loops sure to send tingles somewhere or other on the warmer, more alcohol-fuelled nights. They might have lost the sincerity that led to their being spotlighted up a couple of years back, but this EP proves that there’s another, very digestible string to the Richard In Your Mind bow.
