Album Review: Money For Rope - Money For Rope

Six guys, two drumkits, two guitars, one bass, four voices. This is the aural makeup of Melbourne six-piece Money For Rope. Their rock'n'roll highway is straight, no frills and loud, a fact boldly illustrated by the nine tracks that make up their eponymous debut record. Money For Rope doesn't leave anything to chance, the band riding their influences hard and mean.

It's all been done before – this is the epitome of 'magpie rock', everything gleaned from other quarters – yet it is done well. The sauntering cool of opener Common Man, a bass-led swagger that chaperones us into the album proper, is a slick introduction, extended by the Doors-esque bluster of Been In The Wars. There is a more languid rocker in I'll Be Gone, shimmying up to latter-day Chris Bailey, before Franz Ferdinand-aping Misery Lane jumps out of the darkness, its tale of woe crudely rendered through the lyrics ("When you took me down to Misery Lane/You fucked my arse and then you fucked my brain") and some wonky guitar lines that belie the subject matter. Ten Times could be a diluted Nick Cave's Deanna on a Pacific Island; Hang 'Em Highstarts off subdued before storming through like a blazing freight train, and closer Easy Way Out skirts the issue of suicide yet infuses it with a breakdown that Jon Spencer would be proud of.

The standouts here are Jules McKenzie's warbled, straining vocals and Rick Parnaby's organ. When these two elements entwine like a hedonistic double helix, everything else rises around them to a deafening roar. It's a hell of a lot of fun, and at the end of the day that's the important thing.