Album Review: Dune Rats - Dune Rats

Surprise! In this, their debut album, Brisbane's Dune Rats sing a lot about smoking weed, who woulda thunk it? It's altogether 35 minutes of surf-pop, made up of mostly two-minute songs that lack the pace and energy of their epic live sets, but remain fun and warm. Indebted to Best Coast, with whom they toured last year, the album is at times frantic and at others moody, flitting between balls-out garage riffs and more laidback surf licks.

Opener Dalai Lama is the most fun, but also the most lyrically sparse. Fuelled by power chords and an unbridled enthusiasm for marijuana, the track will get the mosh started at live shows, especially if followed by Superman which takes its slacker-rock cues from Wavves' debut album. Lead single Funny Guy and then Homesick could've been written by Sydney's Palms, but they're some of the more earnest and melodic songs on the album. Them, along with midpoint slow-jam Lola, are obvious highlights, before the middling fast-loud last stretch of the album.  

The problem with the album isn't that it's bad per se, but that it's not a WOW first effort either. It lacks the originality and boldness of some of their peers' blistering debuts, often coming off as derivative. Although some songs are catchy and fun, most don't have enough going for them to drive them anywhere beyond the parking lot – the parking lot in which you can probably find the three boys from Dune Rats smoking a few cones.