Album Review: The Gooch Palms - Introverted Extroverts

Anyone fortunate enough to have caught The Gooch Palms live knows there is a lot more going on than the post-Ramones pastiche that a casual first listen might suggest.

From the finely calibrated bogan-chic aesthetic to the casual comic banter (vocalist-guitarist Leroy McQueen and drummer-vocalist Kat Friend are partners in life as well as music), the Novocastrian duo proffer pop-punk as performance art: inimitable, iconoclastic, tongue-in-cheek and fun as hell.

Look past the ugly hairdos and exaggerated, literally dick-wagging bravado and you find that the party starts at the level of sublimely savvy songwriting. Introverted Extroverts — recorded in "butt-fuck-nowhere Michigan" during a two-week hiatus from touring the States in 2015 — picks up where its predecessor Novo's left off, reinvigorating Gooch Palms' lovingly lo-fi sound without reinventing it. The Ramones remain a major touchstone, but so too does melodic 1960s pop, as evidenced by the relatively downbeat Invisible Man and the demented Frankie Valli-esque "Ai-yie-yies" on the excellent Trackside Daze.

Elsewhere the album sparkles with hooks and licks; every song sounds like a new anthem for revellers both too drunk and not yet drunk enough to call it a night. "It's gonna be ok — just dance," McQueen and Friend insist on Living Room Bop; "Raise your glass and cheer" is the catchcry of GPBNO, both tracks celebrating living life ecstatically, in the moment. The band claims Introverted Extroverts is "the catchiest album you'll ever hear in your whole entire life" — that characteristic piece of comic hyperbole may actually be pretty close to the truth.