Geelong five-piece The Frowning Clouds have released their first album on their new label Rice Is Nice and what they’ve put together here is warm and sunny ‘60s pop, like Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones with less drugs.
It’s an apt continuation from 2010’s Listen Closelier and 2013’s Whereabouts, setting the group up as a kind of modern-day Kinks figure. They’re totally unlike other psych bands on the scene, combining some latter day guitar parts, more Flying Nun than Beatles, with the best parts of the flower decade. While it’s all about the riffs, it never becomes indulgent and self-satisfied; it’s light and fluffy, especially lyrically, when Zak Olsen’s soft, temperate vocals, and harmonies from Nick Van Bakel, lead you on their own Magical Mystery Tour.
It’s a psychstravaganza, but instead of degenerating into ten-minute expansive psych-outs, the album is comprised of two-to-three-minute tight songs, short bursts of catchy catchy psych (try and get it out of your head). Take opener Carrier Drone, Our House, or their second single No Blues, which is well deserving of its triple j airplay. It’s all about the harmonica, while in Move It the spotlight is stolen by the kazoo and effects-heavy vocals; the song in two parts takes in straight psych Strawberry Fields territory (melodic guitar parts that warble along), before a jangly pop breakdown with a little bit of the garage edge they’ve been attributed in the past. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it sure is a lot of fun.
