Album Review: Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Any Port In A Storm

Scott & Charlene's Wedding is the brainchild of frontman and songwriter Craig Dermody, who recently upped stumps from Melbourne for the mean streets of New York. His second album Any Port In A Storm continues the form of 2010 debut Para Vista Social Club, in that the slightly shambolic music has oodles of charm (the new NY-based band is slightly more polished but still defiantly lo-fi), but what really brings home the bacon is Dermody's Jonathan Richman-like lyrical innocence, which manifests in this stream of emotionally direct, life-analysing vignettes.

Ruminations on the vicissitudes of life abound, Dermody seemingly intent on making sense of the curveballs that modern society sometimes throws up. There's a number of unlucky in love songs (Wild Heart, Spring St, Clock Out And Leave) and some fish out of water tales about his new life in the Big Apple (Fakin NYC, Lesbian Wife), and we get a temporal hint about Dermody's inspiration in 1993 (“I ain't done much changing in what I love since 1993”) given that the album's slacker vibe is totally in sync with laidback early-'90s fare such as Pavement or The Lemonheads.

Yet despite all of these melancholy-tinged ruminations there's a wry sense of humour and acceptance pervading everything, and when Dermody sings, “When you've got nothing left you've still got rock'n'roll” (Jackie Boy) you just know that everything's going to work out just fine. Top-notch indie rock.