The Exploders Easy and the Sun by: Ed Butler Tue:18-Dec-07 Label: Rubber Year: 2007 WB rating 70 out of 100

When you call your band The Exploders, you’re setting a certain level of expectation in the minds of your potential fans. You are obligated to rock. Explosively, one imagines. Having listened to their debut album, Easy and the Sun, it would be fair to say that the moniker was at least partially inspired by AC/DC's 'TNT', as The Exploders most clearly look to the vintage Aussie rockers for their inspiration.

Just like Jet. And Airborne. And just like Wolfmother look to Zeppelin and Sabbath.

Australian bands seem to have reached the conclusion that success may only be courted when their influences are worn so firmly on their sleeve that any sense of individual identity is muffled beyond recognition. Indeed, one glance at the band’s website or album sleeve confirms this, with an image of a hirsute 70s bogan astride a Harley figuring prominently alongside a classically extravagant typeset that is lifted straight off Rubber Soul.

Curious that this has occurred in the year that Nick Cave was awarded a Hall-of-Fame award from ARIA. While bands desperate for recognition develop a sound more akin to previous saviours of Aus-rock, rather than setting a new path for this generation, the man who has done more to broaden local preconceptions about the Australian sound is rewarded with the mother of all gongs.

Having said all this, one would be forgiven for assuming that Easy and the Sun is a bad album (after all, Shine On was utterly abysmal). But it isn't. And this is credit to the group's ability to write solid, hook-laden rock, without descending into cliché (too much) or overstaying their welcome. If nothing else, Easy and the Sun could best be described as 'tight'. Get in, unleash as many guitar hooks as humanly possible, get out. Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, outro. All in under 4 minutes, except for a couple of instances. This is fat-free rock, while never descending into realms which would begin to attract 'diet' jokes.

Considering the expectations engendered by the band's name, track one is positively laid back. 'Little Summer Dress' is a delightful little pop ditty, all sunny sounds and redirected adolescent lust. Two and a half minutes later, however, and we're swimming in the distressingly familiar sea of 'Straight Ahead', with its pre-chorus/chorus that can be sourced from {insert generic AC/DC track/s here}.

It really is a shame that Jet got here first, because had they not shot to international superstardom by ripping off Iggy Pop and selling it to Apple, these guys probably would have taken the crown, to the significant benefit of much of the listening public. After all, that previous attack on 'Straight Ahead' wouldn't have made sense had Jet not already tilled such previously fertile musical ground and left it salted and barren for future visitors.

There certainly seems little doubt that The Exploders are more talented, from the bluesy ''Cola', to the obvious singles 'It's Alright Blackbird' and 'I Can't Dance' (which may or may not have begun their existences as the same song). They're a bit less derivative, and quite a lot better.

It's when they diverge from the formula, such as on 'Nevil' where the band find themselves channeling Supergrass, that The Exploders come into their own. However, once again, that is followed up by 'Pretty Girls', which, hand claps and all, could be lifted wholesale from any local retro-rock act's repertoire. And that's the crux of the problem. The Exploders can clearly cobble together a tune and carry it to its likely conclusion with aplomb. They just seem too willing to tailor their sound to a preconceived notion of 'what the kids are listening to right now', rather than exploring their own, particularly muscular, version of blues-rock.