Album Review: The Living Eyes - The Living Eyes

Straight outta Geelong, the self-titled debut from The Living Eyes is as basic and infectious as it comes. Keeping it short and sweet (the longest of these eleven songs – and potentially their best – Up And At Them is three-and-a-half minutes), the four-piece rollick along, offering lackadaisical meditations on staying home at night, wanting to be left alone, and wanting to stick it to the man, as long as it doesn't take too much effort.

Because all the effort goes into constructing killer melodies – these boys know their way around a hook. Sittin' Sick chugs along, a garage staple for the ages; Wrong Doings offers a more unhinged side of the same coin. Down & Out gives the first sense of a swagger, embracing the stagger and sweating on the brain; Heard It All Before slips down the rabbithole and lands next to Eric Burdon and his Animals. The focal point tends to be vocalist/lead guitarist Billy Gardiner, and with good reason – his vocal delivery, somewhere between Eddy Current Suppression Ring's Brendan Suppression and something more guttural, so effortless, combines with some electric solos to drive these songs beyond their seemingly simple compositions.

This is best realised on the tracks Up And At Them (a great off-kilter pop song that shimmers with a bare-bones early T-Rex afterglow) and Stuck In My Own World. Straight up garage rockers like Outta Doubt and Slave Labour (again with the killer solos) slay the speakers, while the spaced-out edgings on Economy First and thrashing, out-of-whack singalong Cry In Shame could have been ripped from the ripped mind of thee John Dwyer and his Oh Sees. Great stuff.