The Raylenes Let The Wild Rumpus Start by: Daniel Grimsey Mon:25-Jun-07 Label: Half A Cow Year: 2007 WB rating 61 out of 100

Right from the get-go it’s clear that The Raylenes' debut album, Let The Wild Rumpus Start is going to a ‘fun’ affair. There are cowbells within the first ten seconds, followed by any other quirky percussion they could find. And Katie Jacobs sings in a very Kimya Dawson kind of way, attempting to fit more syllables into each bar than is humanly possible. Then, when things can’t possibly get any more up, they plop in a slide whistle that goes ‘weeeeeeee.’ Fun! Fun! Fun!

This is possibly the kind of ‘up’ 60s style guitar pop that would be expected from three guys from New Zealand, land of perfect guitar pop bands, who came over to Melbourne to make it big, possibly mistaking 2007 for 1992, and assuming that Frente and Things of Stone and Wood were still ruling the charts.

Although possibly distraught that Melbourne isn’t choc-a-block with Angie Hart look-alikes, the boys did however discover a charming chanteuse by the name of Katie Jacobs. Not quite Angie, but she does give the band a certain unthreateningly sexy charm. And given that The Raylenes, sugar coated and overly catchy sound produces the overall feeling that the band is playing to a bunch of toddlers being unthreateningly sexy is all the sexy they can handle.

The Raylenes are not about being sexy. The Raylenes are about naïve nostalgia. This can be seen in the album’s art work, which features the kind of cute-ness that 30 year old kidults seem to go for these days. All the cutesy kidult favourites are there. Baby deer, aka fawns. Check. Toy robots. Check. An irrational nostalgic love for the cassette. Check. The overall look of the artwork bringing to mind a Little Golden Book. Check. The combination of their sound and look creating the impression that the Raylenes are aiming to be The Wiggles for indie kids.

People only revert to the nostalgia of their childhood when they are unhappy with their current lives. In the Raylene’s case their current lives appear to deal largely with their white collar day jobs, which appear to dominate their lives to the extent that they have to write about them in their songs. So they sing about administrative law on ‘A Clerical Era’, an inbound call centre operator on ‘Never Play The Dame’, and a failed university professor on ‘Your Electricity’.

Feeling the need to escape their mundane lives, The Raylenes have turned their music into a sweet kind of escapism. So while half the album deals with day-to-day issues, the other half deals with locations much more exotic than their work office space.

Case in point: ‘Mexico’, which has a spaghetti western feel, abundant Mexican clichés, and a sneaking suspicion that the band wrote this song straight after watching The Three Amigo’s DVD.

Escapism also rules on ‘Summer Beard’, a psychedelic sing a long, reminiscent of the Fifth Dimension’s ‘Age Of Aquarius,’ with a bridge that would be perfect in the background of a dating montage in a 60’s romantic comedy.

The Raylenes are less enchanting when they leave the exotic behind and begin writing about more mundane things - such as the trials of being an underage kid from the outer suburbs trying to get into a nightclub to pick up a girl on Friday night. Mundane observations about mundane situations, do not suit the Raylenes. It jars with their overly happy sound.

To go along with their naivety, is their penchant for impersonating and, as anyone who has ever been to a karaoke bar will tell you, if you are in the mood for impersonating, chances are you’ll be impersonating Elvis. And this is what the Raylenes do… on ‘Something Monstrous.’ But don’t worry, it only goes on for a second. Although an obvious choice, Elvis is an appropriate impersonation for this song, which sounds like nothing else but an old teenage rock’n’roll number, situated somewhere between ‘Mr Sandman’ and ‘Leader Of The Pack.’ It’s also an absolutely perfect pop song with no notes wasted, full of opportunities to clap along, guarantees of being stuck in your head for days and lyrics dealing with the moral dilemma of what to do when you have a crush on someone who already has a girlfriend. You steal him from her of course. And it’s all packed into 2 minutes and 2 seconds.

Other apparent impersonations include what sounds like a muppet on ‘Getting Young.’ This time the impersonation is less than welcome, turning a song that was already borderline unbearably perky, right over the edge and into fairy floss land.

Although The Raylenes cartoonishly perky sound suggests a naïve optimism, the band has no illusions about their own prospects in the music business. They know they shall fail, and have set themselves up for failure. Their tunes are scattered with characters, most of which have failed, are in the process of failing or will fail in the future. But The Raylenes don’t seem bitter about this at all, but instead seem resigned to this fate, and even find humour in it. Half way through the melancholy ‘Synchronise’ (“Who’d have thought that I’d be falling/ with no direction/ engine stalling”) with all hope lost, Katie croons the words “I knew that there would be strife” someone yells “fight!” and suddenly a playful piano solo ensues. Quite frankly I don’t actually get the joke, but I know one is supposed to be there.

Another source of The Raylenes' charm, is the battle of the sexes that occurs within the tunes. Most songs are duets of sorts, duets that sound like they were taught by the back and forth bitchy banter of the White Stripes ‘It’s True That We Love One Another’ rather than, let’s say ‘I’ve Had The Time Of My Life.’ And in this battle of the sexes, the male vocalist, John Palmer, appears to be the loser. Katie’s voice has much more charm and because of this doesn’t come across as trying too hard to be funny. Although John writes most of the words, when he sings them he sounds like he’s awkwardly trying to make people like him – when Katie sing them, she just sounds too cool for school.

So the Raylenes are a band with a lot of charm, but they are also more than that. They are a band that is pushing the boundaries. The boundaries how chirpy and over-catchy a song can possibly be. Although this creates a whole lot of magic, there is a sense throughout the album as a whole, that this is the sound of a band that have taken the joke quite a bit too far.