Album Review: Camp Cope - Camp Cope

On Melbourne indie-punk trio Camp Cope's debut LP, Georgia Maq, with support from bandmates Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich and Sarah Thompson, delivers a brand of introspective angst that paradoxically can't help but make you smile.

In part it's that voice — raw but dripping with authenticity — which wrings existential consequence out of every mundane detail of Maq's narrative lyrics. That's certainly what sells lead single Lost: Season One, Maq's dismemberment of modern long-distance love, which sees her binge-watching TV in bed while her beloved is "off feeling everything".

Mostly it's the lyrics themselves, with their vivid insights and observations arising from being down-but-not-out in Melbourne's inner west. At times the agenda is political: Maq shreds the victim-blaming mindset that excuses sexual harassment in Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams, and stages small rebellions against overpriced, underperforming public transport services "and the thugs that patrol" them in West Side Story.

But most effective are the personal touches that reveal Maq's fractured worldview, and the possibility of solace in shared experience. In Flesh And Electricity she laments that she's "been desensitised to the human body. I could look at you naked and all I'd see would be anatomy"; yet "It all comes down to the knowledge that we're going to die," she murmurs in West Side Story. "Take comfort in that or be scared for the rest of your life."