Album Review: Bed Wettin' Bad Boys - Ready For Boredom

There are two schools of thought about starting a new rock'n'roll band. Do you get up onstage when you barely know your songs but the intent, passion and spontaneity are still fresh and exciting, or do you spend your first year slogging it out in a rehearsal studio until your songs are ready? The risk of getting out there while you're still learning chords is that you could become known as one of the worst bands in town, while the flipside is that you probably won't sound like anyone else yet, and people will call you the best. 

Sydney's Bed Wettin' Bad Boys debut looks and sounds the business, especially on vinyl – given that Nic Warnock from the band is the brains behind the RIP Society label it's hardly surprising. Far from being a vanity project though, Ready For Boredom deserves its place on the label. So as has been said before, they do sound a lot like The Replacements or even Big Star, the band The Replacements ripped off. It's an easy reference point, but really it's probably down to shared ideology that they end up sounding like them.

Everything's delivered with a sludgy abandon. The guitars are loud and the vocals are buried. Opening track, Devotion, has a bottom end that sounds like everything is detuned. Call almost forgets to chuck a hook in until right at the end. If it was recorded by a different band, Have You Ever could have been a power ballad. Thankfully there's not a lot of unnecessary diversity amongst the tracks – it's what makes the album so compelling.