Archie Bronson Outfit Derdang, Derdang by: Kev Lavery Tue:13-Feb-07 Label: Domino Year: 2006 WB rating 43 out of 100

This album has left me with a feeling I used to experience as a 15-year-old boy watching SBS. I would be watching the most harmless piece of fluff until, of course, my mother entered the room. All of a sudden the television set was aglow with the most abhorrent sex scene it could muster. “What the devil are you watching?” my mother would repeat until I changed the channel. When my mother left the room I would return to my SBS program, which had now resumed its harmless fluff quality.

Derdang, Derdang creates the same conundrum; having just finished listening to ‘Kink’ and ‘Cherry Lips’ – which I quite enjoyed – my girlfriend entered the room and ‘Dart For My Sweetheart’ began. I was met with “what the fuck is this? Can I turn it off?” and I had to protest and change the music, similar to the interaction with my mother, until she left. When she did I guiltily reloaded the album and began to listen again. It then struck me how right she was to behave that way in response to Derdang, Derdang.

Culled down from 50 mini-discs of music, one fails to see why Derdang, Derdang needs such grand origins when these 11 songs contain the slightest of differences from one track to the next. Who could record 50 mini-discs of music and decide that “Dart For My Sweetheart” was a real keeper (and to release it as a single is foolishness at its most objectionable)? As with every song on this album the structure of this track is very jam-based; what separates this song, however, is the band’s exploration of the treacherous musical terrain known as numeral literacy. Only the Pointer Sisters' ‘Pinball Number Count’ was able to create a credible song based on figures alone. The repetitiveness of counting alienates any possible audience and ABO have made this tedious mistake not once, but twice, on the album. This, coupled here with the cyclical riffs that seem to be the ABO’s stock-in-trade, highlights the weaknesses of the band, to the point of them being unlistenable.

The song proceeds with “1 is the…. 2 is the…” until Windett reaches twelve (brief respites are awarded in the form of a bridge of screeching yelps).  The band also utilises another of their standard musical devices on this song: an extra minute of music, generally after a brilliant stop, that revisits the main riff or the chorus. It is at these stops that you find yourself content; “What a lovely end to a song” you might think, then the extra minute begins.

A clue to how this album sounds can be found in two of the song titles ‘Rituals’ and ‘Cuckoo’. There is a terribly ritualistic approach to song writing on this album; it seems that the band does not work on songs past the jamming stage. As a result the songs are half-baked, droning, and little more than longwinded scrapings from jams that should have remained in the rehearsal space or on one of those 50 mini-discs. Many are easily comparable to the bleating of a cuckoo clock. The ABO’s unwillingness to acknowledge a listening audience seems to be one of the band’s major faults. Listening to each song from start to finish became a laborious task. Each glance at the remaining time forcing my brain to scream: “how can there possibly be another minute and a half? Can’t we just turn it off and pretend we listened until the end?”

Despite what I have previously stated about this album, I will say this: if this album had been an EP instead of a full length album I would have really enjoyed it. It was when I reached the fifth song that Derdang, Derdang really began to wear me out. ‘Kink’, ‘Cherry Lips’ and ‘Dead Funny’ are the album’s stand out tracks, but they are lost in a sea of mundane, ill-conceived ramblings. ‘Modern Lovers’ actually sees Windett play one chord repeatedly for the entire song interspersed with brief stops. I have never had two and a half minutes take longer in all my life.

The major gripe I have with this album is the final song ‘Harp For My Sweetheart’; an acoustic reprise of ‘Dart For My Sweetheart’. It’s as if the band is saying “you know that we can rock out, but check this out… we can also play acoustically.” Hooray! And a reprise of the most annoying song on the album played exactly the same but on an acoustic guitar? “But it’s stripped back,” I hear the protests. If your guitar parts are boring when you play them on an electric guitar – chock full of distortion – they don’t get better when you unplug. This song’s only saving grace is that it doesn’t go as long as “Dart For My Sweetheart”. This brevity would have been much appreciated on most other tracks on the album.

The Archie Bronson Outfit’s press release paints the band as romantic vagabonds. Here they read voraciously, emit musical explosions by day and party hard at night – winning the hearts of many a wild, loose-legged lady along the way. The given night time exploits of the band tie in with how I would equate their music; it sounds like drunken sex. I’ll explain: every song on this album starts with promise of a good time to be had by all involved. The songs will then repeat the same action for a long time – for some, I imagine, what feels like forever – then change things up briefly. But there is not enough divergence here to make any real difference. They stop. But then start hammering away in the same dry manner regardless of our needs. In the end the listener is left with the promise of a good time unfulfilled (in a similar fashion to my youthful SBS watching). The poor delivery and drawn presentation leave the listener feeling under whelmed, unappreciated and a bit dirty.