Album Review: The Ocean Party - Social Clubs

Melbourne has had its fair share of slacker pop bands of late (Twerps, Dick Diver, Pageants) and upstarts The Ocean Party are running in the same direction, if at a somewhat alternate gait. Having released an album at the beginning of 2012, they went straight back into the studio to record Social Clubs before guitarist Curtis Wakeling (also of the excellent Velcro) ventured overseas. Social Clubs is not a rushed effort, however, with the band increasing their focus so that these ten tracks fly by, an easy-listening ramble that slots into the groove that Real Estate inhabit, while licking at the heels of vintage luminaries such as Buddy Holly and The Beach Boys.

With three vocalists holding sway, the album remains amazingly cohesive. Each song sways at a laconic pace, sunny and upbeat in the face of all situations – unemployment, youthful poverty, frustration, ennui – nothing beats letting the sun wash the sins away. Lead singer Lachlan Denton highlights this during On The Floor (“The sun beats down upon my head/Don't wish to be anywhere”), while Wakeling's Bored Of It All takes on a countrified swagger. The one-two centrifugal force of Hot Headed and the title track (talking of the clichés that form at your local watering hole) offers a bit of garage rock into the equation, while a wistful piano tinkles in the background of Lay Me Down, but these minute shifts in tone are just effortless inclusions rather than feckless efforts of fleshing out the sound.

Social Clubs sounds easy, and is easy to like, yet such amiability is incredibly difficult to manufacture. The Ocean Party do it with ease.