The Triangles Seventy-Five Year Plan by: Geoff Lemon Tue:28-Aug-07 Label: Half A Cow Year: 2007 WB rating 88 out of 100

There was a moment of dread when the promo material bundled with Seventy-Five Year Plan promised live shows “filled with energetic stage antics and a lot of yelling”. Firstly the word ‘antics’ is in a class of words with ‘wacky’ and ‘zany’: the kind you find on the back of truly awful straight-to-video American 90s comedies starring Chris Farley or one of the perennial rehab kings from The Breakfast Club. Secondly for some reason everyone I spoke associated The Triangles with Architecture in Helsinki. ‘Antics’ raised the prospect of derivative ridiculousness in the AiH style, and the far scarier prospect that I might actually have to use ‘wacky’ or ‘zany’ in this review. The AiH link on The Triangles’ site only compounded the fear. Mercifully though, time proved that The Triangles are treading a very different path, and I was able to leave ‘wacky’ and ‘zany’ buried in the backyard where they belong.

Far from being a bunch of AiH mimics, The Triangles are confidently striking out with their own individual sound and a blessed absence of gimmickry. There is no trace of the deliberate ugliness, vocally or musically, that is currently so prevalent (think The 1990s, The Vines or Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Just as well, because the style’s novelty value is proving to be limited. Seventy-Five Year Plan is a different beast, a beautiful collection of immaculately arranged melodies that could be loosely grouped as folk-pop, but would be happier unconstrained by genre. The Triangles’ second full-length album after 2005’s Magic Johnson, it was recorded over a period of sixteen months in Melbourne. The band’s experience and the time they took over their task are evident in this record’s careful construction. The end result is warm and endearing, but with its sweetness carefully balanced out with humour, idiosyncrasy and bursts of rollicking tempo. A host of guest musicians contribute with instruments as diverse as concertina, melodica, trombone, banjo, stylophone and clarinet. And yes, for the primary school nostalgics among us, there’s even a recorder thrown in there somewhere.

Seventy-Five Year Plan comes out of the blocks fast. ‘The Other Side of the Pillow’ sneakily starts out like a moody Tarantino-soundtrack crooner before suddenly dropping the rock n’ roll hammer. Then come the best two tracks on the album, the gorgeous ‘Horse in the Ointment’ (which, though I never thought I could say such a thing, is made perfect by Paul Rigby’s guest banjoing), and the immensely fun rocker ‘Meat Blanket’. Importantly though, The Triangles don’t fall away after using their most accessible material first up. Whenever a song risks getting overly cute, something snaps the trend, like guitarist Matt Gormann’s chanting vocals on ‘Citizens’ Band’ or the whistling strut of ‘Ancient City’. It’s also nice to hear a band having fun with their music, their jaunty, singalong arrangements coupled cheerily and surreally with lines like “All our crops are doomed to fail now/with tractors stacked against us/and the locals calling for our heads on pikes.” It must be said though that there is a fine line between being fun and being annoying which is not always obeyed.

The most impressive thing about Seventy-Five Year Plan is how goddamn likeable it is. This is the sort of album you’ll put on four or five times a day without even noticing, and still not get sick of. Long after the spins necessary to review it, I keep finding it’s still on my stereo. Eleanor Horsburgh’s lead vocals are luxury for the ear, rich to the point of saturation, and she is well supported by Gormann, sometimes in a clever 1-2 arrangement. The difference between Horsburgh’s beautiful singing and the deliberate vocal harshness of AiH’s latest offering is the difference between soaking in a hot bath with a martini and taking to your own eyeball with a cheese grater.
 
Seventy-Five Year Plan has one chief limitation. Except perhaps for ‘Horse in the Ointment’ and ‘Our Crops Are Doomed to Fail’, The Triangles’ lyrics are solid without often flaring into brilliance. On the flipside, at times they also lapse into mediocrity. Some of the lines are too twee or ridiculous – is it just me, or is it hard to take seriously a song containing the phrase “standing beside the puffin enclosure quivering with fear”? More often the faults are technical, and frustratingly, easily avoidable: using words that don’t rhythmically fit, or mispronouncing words in order to jam them into a line. Deliberate mispronunciation is the laziest possible lyrical conduct, and the occasional sloppiness in this regard irritates both the ear and the temperament. Lyricists should be honest enough to seek help in refining their work. The risk of such lapses is that listeners will patronise the band rather than giving it full respect.

Really though, the amateurish moments stand out precisely because the rest of the product is so good, and this band is still streets ahead of most of their competitors. The Triangles are charming without being fake, warm without being cloying, and inventive without being gimmicky. Their musical sensibility is sharp and the composition of their songs cannot be faulted. Regardless of whether their live show is as chaotic as promised, on the strength of their record I’d travel a long way to see them play. Ultimately, this album has vastly more heart than most of its contemporaries. The Triangles sing it like they mean it. And they should be commended on what is one of the better Australian releases of 2007.