Album Review: Rolling Blackouts - Talk Tight

Self-proclaimed purveyors of tough pop/soft punk, Melbourne's Rolling Blackouts have added a rougher-hewn edge to the jangled slacker-rock that emanates from our great wide land on Talk Tight.

The five-track EP is indeed tight, a carefully calibrated beast made loose and fast. It busts out of the gate in a rambunctious canter with Wither With You, taking a more tumbledown approach to Flying Nun guitar-pop via the off-kilter histrionics of Jonathan Richman and the laconic lyrical nous of Paul Kelly. The subject matter is more maudlin than the music suggests, but therein lies its charm, the locomotive shuffle exploding any lingering sorrow. The propulsive energy intensifies with the rambling rock of Wide Eyes, a song that ricochets between country, garage and psychedelic rock(s) as played by inebriated ne'er-do-wells, fumbling with their instruments and their schooners with inexhaustible vigour. Heard You're Moving has a Bruce Springsteen sense of blue-collar nostalgia, a laconic, outback version of latter-day The Men; while closer Tender Is The Neck is imbued with sepia-and-sunset tones, the kind of revisionist '80s soft-rock fuzz that The Ocean Party are mastering. All of these elements hinge on the unkempt, rollicking beauty of Clean Slate, a rock song so enamoured with propelling itself forward that it barely cares about looks and fashions, a shambolic ode to classic Australian garage-rock with the sun beating down. Bring on the full-length.