Album Review: Kingswood - Juveniles

With each album, Kingswood all but wipe clean the slate. The Melbourne four-piece came out all guns blazing in the early 2010s with big, punchy, ‘70s-tinged guitar rock in the form of singles Yeah Go Die, Medusa and She’s My Baby, with debut album Microscopic Wars following suit. But then they flipped the table with After Hours, Close To Dawn offering a cleaner, more broadly appealing format. Their latest, Juveniles, sits somewhere in between; one foot is firmly planted in pub-rock but the other steps in and out of ‘60s pop-rock and upbeat indie.

Juveniles starts with a return to their roots – You Make It So Easy has all the fuzzy guitar lines and Fergus Linacre’s trademark wail that their first singles sported. It continues as Ready Steady and Say You Remember tick along, but by midway through it feels polished and fairly straight in terms of melody and structure. Dotted throughout, however, are downshifts into swaggering Josh Homme territory – and those angular guitars shadowing a falsetto in Cross My Heart could legitimately be mistaken for a Queens Of The Stone Age track – which is cool, but somewhat diverting. 

Juveniles feels like a wet blanket pegged to a Hills Hoist – the middle sags but the ends are taut and do all the heavy lifting.