Album Review: The Laurels - Plains

Finally dropped after a lengthy wait, the debut album from young Sydney quartet The Laurels, Plains, finds them replacing the reliance on volume that characterised their early shows with a quest for tone and nuance, the interplay between both the guitars of Luke O'Farrell and Piers Cornelius and the rhythm section engine room (Conor Hannan on bass and Kate Wilson on percussion) – and the way those two camps are juxtaposed – betraying a music obsessive's knowledge of rock'n'roll, both in form and performance.

The blissful songs are immediate but rife with intricacies, and there's enough diversity amongst the tracks to make Plains a valid journey, complete with peaks and troughs. There's no doubt that their influences are far broader than the 'shoegaze' genre to which they're so readily relegated – '60s psych another obvious yardstick, among others – but there's no denying that Swervedriver are an apt touchstone for the beautiful washes of guitar that colour the album.

The epic, sprawling opener, Tidal Wave, kicks things off, followed by the punchy urgency of single, Changing The Timeline, before the smooth dreamy psych of Traversing The Universe pulls us gently on another tangent. The airy This City Is Coming Down comes complete with bendy Built To Spill-esque guitars, while Manic Saturday is probably the pick of the bunch with its chirpy guitars and joyous demeanour and A Rival proves an emphatic closer, keeping things hypnotic to the end.

There are no rough edges, everything feels smoothed over to ensure a blissful, lazy experience, with enough going on in the margins to keep you coming back for more. Tough yet thoughtful, Plains is a wonderfully well-crafted, assured and audacious debut album.