The Red Wiggle's Cameo In DZ Deathrays' Clip Is The Best & Weirdest Thing You'll See All Year

Customers, a word in acknowledgement of one of the most horrible twilight zones for a band or artist: the ‘critical darling’ and its often close relation, the ‘cult favourite’. Loosely, passionate people making music and probably just getting pissed off with being told how good they are, while ferreting around between the cushions on the sofa trying to cobble together enough change for a bread roll. One seemingly coming out of that bardo is Will Toledo, who’s been an almost textbook case. A dozen albums on Bandcamp with an attendant growing, er, ‘cult’ leads to a change of name to the band guise of Car Seat Headrest and signing to a label of good reputation. Teens Of Denial saw the kudos keep coming, before he takes the interesting left turn of recycling and actually re-recording one of those earlier DIY albums - with a better budget and more new friends to play on it. First sample of this reboot of Twin Fantasy is My Boy (Matador) where he manages to retain the intimate approaching heartbreak of Version1.0, but the realisation he always had a bigger vision for his music – which he had already built into the songs’ constructions. Whether this loses any of the original’s ramshackle charm will probably be decided by those listening from the start, invoking the equally traditional “I like his old stuff better than his new stuff…” rule.

Another way to widen your brand recognition, the carefully chosen cameo appearance in your video. This is so people half-dozing late on a Saturday night can slightly jolted into more wakefulness when they go ‘Hey! Isn’t that….you know, what’s his name?’ and then actually try and work who the band is. Taken to extremes it can work against you – like Justin Timberlake getting Prince to make that posthumous appearance on a sheet at the Superbowl – or can be inspired. DZ Deathrays can only enhance their place in the world by getting nicest guy in showbiz - and actually a helluva guitar player in his own right – Murray Cook to dig his old red skivvy moves out of the wardrobe and Wiggle it all about for Like People (I Oh You). Muzza aside, this is typically shouty but melodic DZ’s fare, and will very likely get them closer to a ride in that big red car to hitsville.

But enough of this relentless positivity, some of you serious souls have been hungering for a certain breed of angst for over 14 years. But after a one-song-for-a-soundtrack hint six months or so ago, a full-scale return for Maynard James Keenan’s ‘other’ band A Perfect Circle is preceded by Talk Talk (BMG). As well as AJK and regular offsider Billy Howerdel, the darkly-clad men scowling intently at the camera now include former-and-maybe-future Smashing Pumpkin James Iha which can only add to the clenched and troubled delivery of questionable lines such as ‘Like a cake in crisis…’(?). Well, at least that’s what I think he was so-deeply grumbling about.

Turn-of-the-century existential questioning can now be happily put aside as Flowertruck stumble in the door having returned from rummaging through the specials’ table at the Newtown Vinnies, where they found that perfect paisley blouse that will make them appear even more awkwardly effortless in their guise of being an example of a perfectly timeless indie pop band (with guitars) of inner suburbs near a university. Enough For Now (Spunk) is a little gawky, but with the charm and hooks to allow you to ignore the holes in the share-house lounge chair, and the smell of stale bongwater from the bedroom of the housemate nobody really talks about. But the sun is shining into the courtyard, so we’ll go and drink goon and longnecks under the Hills Hoist. As ever, and as ever will be. Scuffed, but shiny.

And sometimes, all it takes is a voice. It’s odd that Marlon Williams occasionally seems to want to downplay that extraordinary gift of his. And while watching him cavort in his boxers on the beach on his previous, What’s Chasing You, had it cockeyed charms this is certainly more the business. Come To Me (Caroline) is quietly glorious. Country-tinged and plaintive, you just feel the longing in it even while calling the personal fouls of the two-on-two basketball rumble as Mister Williams and his bandmates stroll the familiar streets of his native little town of Lyttleton, NZ. If there’s a message, it’s to stop and smell the flowers, and just listen to the beautiful heartbreak with which he imbues it. Just fucking lovely.

No less than Paul Kelly often boils down the subject matter of most all songs to ‘sex, death, family, and/or friends’, which is fair enough. The philosophical meanderings of Augie March have often pondered any or all of the above among other more esoteric concerns, and When I Am Old (Caroline/UMA) is a not so much a fear of the reaper – although he’s in the neighbourhood – but Glenn Richards observing his own decline into decrepitude as the band amble along and rattle their bones around his words. There is, as ever, an odd intelligent idiosyncratic beauty to what they do. Not quite rock and roll music to let you dance over your problems, but feel free to scratch your chin thoughtfully and muse on mortality. Yeah, that’s the way to spend a cheerful Saturday night. Or probably not.

But when I grow up, I’d really like to be Dave Graney & Clare Moore – ok, maybe I’ll have to find someone to play the Clare part. There’s now books to go with the music, further proving their status as a true renaissance couple, as Song Of Life (Cockaigne) saunters down the avenue, rolls and converses, joining their canon of arched eyebrow observations of the human condition coloured by their very individual experience of life inside, outside, and most often just watching from the fringes, of Australian ‘culture’ - musical and otherwise. Living national treasures, both.