Sometimes, just defaulting to the classic conventions of the music video can still work. That’s probably why they’re the classic conventions. Somewhat unlikely entrant to the field of life-on-the-road rock tour travelogues, Totally Mild.
So, obviously they’re not going to have the grainy footage of drunken carnage and TVs in the swimming pool – but Take Today (Chapter Music) has all the requisite snapshots out the car window of highway lines stretching into the distance, bowling alleys, and those time-warped truckstop cafes that are still out there.
The song is their typical askance-glancing sweet soaring pop with both tang and twang, as they puzzle the nature of life and relationships. Then you get back in the car, push the amp across the backseat to make space and keep driving to the next gig.
Then you can change things a bit. The whole conceit of Babymetal has always been perfectly surreal in the Japanese model. Tartan-skirted anime girls brought to life, screaming and squealing as a squall of fizzing kinda-metal guitars goes off behind them. But now they’re talking of “letting their dark side loose”, and sign to Marilyn Manson’s and The Prodigy’s management – coz some of the ‘evil’ might rub off? Ok, sure. Thus, Distortion (5D/Cooking Vinyl) turns down the kawaii cuteness, the backing drummer gets one of those chain-drive drum pedals that makes everything sound double speed, and they offer a racket suitable for use in overdubbed Nipponese edition of one Avengers movie or another as the clip suggests.
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But while that plays to certain cultural clichés, the phrase ‘Canadian hardcore/punk band’ equally doesn’t seem to feel quite right. I mean, they’re such polite folks. Now watch Comeback Kid make a nice visitor’s gesture as they gear up to tour ' round these parts. Yes, it’s that Beds Are Burning (Nuclear Blast) ditty you know being appropriated here, but with Midnight Oil’s dusty diesel Landcruiser seemingly supplanted by a chainsaw mounted on a monster truck. It screeches and spits in the manner required, although you feel Garrett might pull a hammy if he tried dancing to this version.
If you’re after some truth in titling - Australian-style with a French accent - and never being one to miss the chance at a dad-joke level pun, Guillotine (I Oh You) could and should be described as ‘choppy’ in its approach. And, as ever, DZ Deathrays make a helluva racket for a two-man operation as Shane yells heartily and Simon hits things enthusiastically. Again as you’d expect there’s an angry joy to it, and we’ll all jump around and happily yell along with it.
And across the Tasman, the art of carefully awkward indie pop remains a fine currency, as well it should. Jed Parsons has been side guy to many a Kiwi band of similar taste and vision, but ups the dagginess quotient for the banana-skin false bravado under his own name of Everybody’s Stupid (Independent). It’s a perhaps more suburban take – and certainly more South Island take on the self-mocking masculine pugnacity of something like our Callinan or Cameron. Although of the sort more likely to playing old Crowded House songs on the radio-cassette, than knowing who The New York Dolls were. Then consider how many takes it took to get some these basketball stunts done…
Some titles can be a little problematic, particularly if they’ve been used by others previously. Pride (I Oh You) may well come before a fall if U2’s experience with the word is anything to go by, but City Calm Down come at it seemingly without irony: this is unashamed serious anthemic business aimed for the terraces, or at least the back few rows of the Hordern Pavilion or similar sized arena. The verses are of that half-swallowed passion, the choruses bigger by turn, there’s even some classic ‘80s plastic sax off in the distance, and places on FM rock radio and the chart countdown on Rage seems fairly assured.
If you’re pondering who Darcy Baylis is, some of you might recall he’s one of those names probably less recognisable on last year’s Australian Music Prize list alongside the likes of Paul Kelly, Jen Cloher, and Sampa The Great – the latter who actually won the $30k on offer, if that’s slipped your memory as well. But what he does make is a collision of machines and humanity that you feel will find an international audience, perhaps over one here. With the guest vocals of UV Boi, D4 (Good Manners) takes some of its cues from modern synthetic soul and R&B – although that does mean the seemingly obligatory use of that autotune vocal effect many will either embrace or loathe. But even through that, this song really does seem to have an openness and doubt to the process of falling in love that it discusses. The textures of it don’t really suggest its locality or origin – and that might just work in its favour elsewhere.
