The Smith Street Band's New Single Is 'Strayan As, But That's A Good Thing

When your worlds — whether personal, professional, political, or emotional — are turning to shit, there’s a few ways to handle it. You can go at it realistically, of course — but that’s always the most boring and probably wearing. Philosophically — but how many times can you cop seeing that ‘cat hanging from a tree-branch’ meme on your Facebook timeline? Or you might go totally surreal and absurd, which at least allows you to laugh and point at the tribulations in your way. Various musical artistes deal with it in various of these manners.

There often seems a wryly resigned shrug to The Smith Street Band’s take on the suburban blues. But there’s even a subtle change among their sometime troubled bellowing here. Beside Jess Locke adding some female leavening to Will Wagner’s yell, and some Hitchhiker's Guide in the visuals, the perfectly cans-and-phones-aloft chorus of Birthdays (Pool House) comes with some synths in the hook to add some texture. But fear not, there’s still enough sweat with a head on it for this to be another of those chats which ends up in the blokey romance of the awkward man-hug and a slur of “I really love you, maaaaaaaaayte.” This is #Straya, but in a good way.

If you prefer a bit of Swedish deadpan everyday surrealism, Jens Lekman is probably more your go. Evening Prayer (Secretly Canadian/Inertia) is an oddly candid and oddly jaunty conversation as talk of a 3D printout of a tumour — yes, really — and increasing doses of certain painkillers somehow provokes an empathy, and even an open-ended chance of love. Mr Lekman ponders various human conditions with the odd passionate detachment of a man who sounds like he might be singing phonetically, but who really does know what the words are saying. Even the story makes you curious about what might happen to the protagonists next after they order the next drink.

Or maybe you can just hurl some glitter over the slings and arrows, with one of those songs to make you dance stupidly round the kitchen while doing so. PWR BTTM — and perhaps you might look up the neat sexual politics of their name, but only if you are of consensual age — reckon it’s just a Big Beautiful Day (Polyvinyl). Liv and Ben are happy with being called ‘queer punk’, which adds another angle to the glorious mess that they are. They end up on an odd curvy line — they might run from somewhere like our own madly grinning shamelessly trashy Gooch Palms kiddies, but with that perversely life-affirming cheer of The Flaming Lips when they were a ‘punk’ band that was enjoying themselves, revelling in whatever time they had.

Or you can grit your teeth, and hold that grief in check. Just. Aldous Harding has been working with regular PJ Harvey collaborator and producer, John Parish. And that makes perfect sense as you lean into the clenched hurt of Horizon (4AD/Remote Control). There is so much space around her kinda-folk voice and the skeletal electronics with it, but here it often seems filled with an unresolved loss — or about-to-be-lost. That this individual New Zealand voice has been signed to the much-respected 4AD label, should further suggest her quality. She might just be uncomfortably extraordinary.

Conversely, it’s often the commercial American way to take your angst and ache, and smother it under a lush pillow of sound. Amy Lee, better known as the voice and presence of Evanescence had been wintering in Italy – certainly another country that can revel in musical melodrama. There she found a local pop epic, which translates as Love Exists (Sony). There is emotion, there are strings, there’s massed voices and armies of guitars and other machines. It will likely be enormous in her homeland, but you kind of hope we don’t need something quite so obvious.

Compare and contrast with our James Crooks. Not Going Away (Liberation) is obviously of the producer-driven modern pop model, Mr Crooks already with names like Safia and Tigertown on his resume. It’s certainly built on the contemporary electronics, but the mix of Kate Martin’s voice with his make it undeniably human and likely to join the playlist of the national youth network and probably somewhere around the middle third of the Hottest 100, whatever day they hold it.

The layers and waves of Saatsuma have a warmth as well, Cesar Rodrigues’ constructions complement Memphis Kelly’s pretty handy musical genes — yes, she is one of Paul’s egregiously talented offspring, although her music here is defiantly of the 21st century variety. Isolate (Blank Tape) engages in its detachment, and it all ends up clever, smart, and just damn good. Live, it comes with old analogue synths and more voices, and is apparently a different, but still intriguing beast. This makes you want to investigate both variants.

Perhaps hiding too much out of the sunshine of their Sunshine Coast native habitat, Fragile Animals make a polished indie noise. If that’s somewhat of a contradictory oil and water mix, it's much like the visuals that go with Signals (Evergreen). Unlike some of their ilk, they’ve taken their time to get to this, and where some others come seemingly only half-ready, this is fairly assured musical architecture of a classic guitar/bass/drums trio that knows what it’s doing, with Victoria’s voice another of those with a distinctive edge.