Album Review: Pageants - Dark Before Blonde Dawn

Melbourne seem intent on churning out quality bands that revel in careless jangle and affected whimsy, and in the likes of Twerps' hands it's an easy sell. However, the cover of Pageants' debut record Dark Before Blonde Dawn intimates we are in for a tropical-pop treat as bland as it is strangely attractive – pictures of the band on deckchairs and wearing Hawaiian shirts, tropical fruits and titles such as Coconut Ice and Relaxation. But it is a musical deception, steeped in a woozy-yet-surreal outlook belying these languid jams thus making them a strange-yet-striking concoction.

Opener Persian Fairy Floss' jangly wistfulness underscores the instrumentation and is juxtaposed by Ben Pell's weary and wasted vocal delivery, with amusingly barbed retorts like, “For every criminal act she puts a penny in a jar and says, 'If you keep this up you'll be as rich as fuck'.” In fact it's Pell's lyrics that are the lynchpin here, traversing the sardonic, the absurd and the heartbreaking with the slightest turn of phrase. Each tune holds its own, with the slowburn rock of Acidic Cruise (“Silence would be gold but there are hippies on the road playing hacky sack”), the sonic charm and lyrical unease of Pleasure Perched In The Parlour Palms (“Leisure lurks in the lush green grass/A sniper waits in a tree at the edge of the park”) and the wasted sojourn through Footprints In The Sand.

Dark Before Blonde Dawn is a great guitar pop album that floats on Pell's literate absurdities and gossamer instrumentation, which juggles summertime sincerity and slacker ennui. The result is one of the most intriguing records of the year – and one of the best.