Album Review: The Bennies - Natural Born Chillers

Life's just one big party for The Bennies. The Melbourne four-piece have flung their antics at us in the live setting with a flurry of tie-dye tank tops, technicolour spandex and sweaty tangles of hair, and aptly their stoner-ska-punk sound has followed suit across all their releases to date.

The title of their latest - Natural Born Chillers - says it all, really, but where Rainbows In Space, EP Heavy Disco and Wisdom Machine dosed up on the good-time party anthems at almost every turn, their latest fleshes out some straighter rock and makes for a more encompassing listen.

First single Get High Like An Angel is one of a handful of tracks that still muck around with horns and some sweet guitar licks, and yet, "I get high like an angel," is sung with such conviction that it's impossible not to peg it down as one of the straighter offerings, alongside Destination Unknown, Ocean and Apathetic Revolution. Offsetting some of this slightly soul-searching lyricism with batshit-crazy guitar and shouty vocal antics - in Dreamkillers and Trip Report - makes for classic, upbeat Bennies gems. More than eight tracks would have gone down super, but what is offered is easily relatable, honest and in the sort of cynical language we all speak.