The Temper Trap
The Temper Trap
The Temper Trap confound expectations on the follow-up to 2009’s widely successful ‘Conditions’, writes DARREN LEVIN.
In a scathing, two-star review of their new album, UK critic Alexis Petridis likened The Temper Trap’s musing on the London riots to Air Supply taking a stab at Thatcherism. Writing in The Guardian, he said that while “uniquely placed” to write on the riots – having relocated from Melbourne in 2009 – the band had really nothing to say. “The sense of a band who felt impelled to write about the riots without first checking whether or not they had anything to say about the riots is hard to miss,” he wrote, “which might be the Temper Trap's failing in a nutshell.”
Coming in at #2 on the band’s self-titled and long-delayed second album, ‘London’s Burning’ opens with samples of a (fake?) newsreader, reporting on “clashes” with youths in several cities, before segueing into a (real?) interview with a disenfranchised teen who brags about looting the shops he recently handed his resumes to. “It’s payback, innit?” he says, chillingly, like a young Dizzee Rascal; an ominous synth gurgling away in the background. Singer Dougy Mandagi enters the fray with the kind of million-dollar voice that could win The Voice in a canter. “Heavy is the hand pressing down again and again,” he sings in a pure tenor, later asking, “Will tomorrow come for the man stuck in the line?”
The track is otherwise unremarkable; driven by a post-punk riff that probably sounded “urgent” when it came out, but is now polished to the point of hollow perfection. Its intent, however, is what’s key. Mandagi’s take on the city’s simmering tensions may not be ‘London Calling’ MK II – it’s not even The Smiths’ ‘Panic’ if we’re talking in flowery MOR terms – but bereft of other artistic voices on the subject (outside of hip-hop and grime that is), it’s at least trying to make sense of a situation that British mainstream artists seem, for whatever reason, unwilling to broach.
It’s not grandstanding or Bono-like self-importance that drives Mandagi either, as he told me in an interview back in 2009. It was just a few weeks before moving with his bandmates to the London suburb of Hackney, in the eye of the storm so to speak. “I write about what I’m feeling at the time,” Mandagi said. “I like to write about humanity and a lot of our failures and how it relates to the world around us, the environment, the community and ourselves as individuals.” The difference now is he has an audience.
Prior to Conditions, The Temper Trap were just another ambitious Melbourne band writing to no one in particular; now they’re being talked up by Bono and having to answer rip-off claims from The Edge. This unlikely set of circumstances – you could say it’s “an important time for them” – forces you to think big. And while they’ve always thought in grandiose terms (you don’t hire Tony Hoffer or Jim Abbiss to make humble records), this time around it must’ve really felt like the whole world was listening in.
It’s what makes The Temper Trap so confounding, because it’s not really trying to consolidate a pop career. There’s no “Shazam moment” here like ‘Sweet Disposition’, surely the most sync’ed track of 2008. The closest they come is a moody 6/8 number called ‘Trembling Hands’, which is not early as immediate, but given the right set of circumstances – a soft drink commercial, the closing credits of another rom-com, perhaps? – it may well be the ‘Clocks’ to their ‘Yellow’.
Trembling Hands by The Temper Trap
The rest of the album is what people will diplomatically call a “slow-burner”, in that it’s supposed to reveal itself the more you listen to it. It’s just another way of saying it’s difficult. Mandagi has admitted to going through a break-up prior to its recording, and you’ve got to hand it to the guy, at least he’s not just putting on a brave face. It’s all there in the titles: ‘Need Your Love’; ‘This Isn’t Happiness’; ‘Where Do We Go From Here’ (ironically, the only bright pop song on this record); the Radiohead-ian ‘Rabbit Hole’; and aptly titled closer ‘Leaving Heartbreak Hotel’, which provides some closure for this wounded bird at least.
“If ‘Conditions’ took The Temper Trap into the stratosphere, this may be the album that thuds them back down to earth.”
In the “electronic press kit” for the album, drummer Toby Dundas – an M+N writer in a past life – said the band had been guilty of being a bit too calculating in the past. “When we get sucked into writing that way, a week or two later when you look back, they don’t really have the soul. They might be shiny, but there’s nothing under the surface.” The Temper Trap may still be contrived melodrama on many levels, but that has more to do with aesthetic choices than heart. Because when you strip away all the studio gloss and needless quest for perfection, this is an album about heartbreak and isolation, but also of five boys from Melbourne trying to make sense of a fantastical world.
If Conditions took The Temper Trap into the stratosphere, this may be the album that thuds them back down to earth. And, you know what? It’s not such a bad place to be.
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‘The Temper Trap’ is out now through Liberation.
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FIRST
Kind.
Fence sit
5 live for US Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/rs-live/the-temper-trap-new-transcendent-pop-from-aussie-band-20120523
Okay, I like them melodically, but there lyrics are shit.
their rather.
abysmal.
Couldn't agree more.
Alex Petridis is a woman
Shazam moment of this thread
He should have reviewed his jacket/hat combo.
More like Temperate Trap!
Shouldn't ''Temper Trap receive 2 stars in Guardian'' be filed under news?
DON'T TELL US WHAT'S NEWS AND WHAT'S NOT
i think stuff filed under news is news and stuff filed in other sections isn't.
how'd i go?
Lyrics posted in the comments section of the Guardian review:
EUUURGGHHHH!
Jesus. That's high school as fuck
Are those lyrics real?
No more maybes
You're baby's looting JD Sports
And it's a LIMERICK. How does that work? I don't think I've heard many songs in AABBA, (which incidentally sounds like a good name for an ABBA cover band made up of locksmiths)
I don't know, actually. I hope not!
Haha, damn.
[Female reporter]
Another night of rioting in England as police clash with youths in several
Cities.
[Male interviewer]
You went to the stores that you had applied for a job at?
[Male interviewee]
Yeah, I went across, like, I went to Clapham, yeah, to go where I handed
Out a CV, I was like, yeah, you didn't want to reply back to my e-mail?
Well I was like, yeah, this is payback isn't it! Payback, man!
[Male interviewer]
And what about you? Any bad feelings at all? Have you ever thought about it
At night when you've been sleeping in your bed?
[Male interviewee]
No, 'cause I'm watching my plasma that I just got. Seems like Christmas
Came early (came early). Payback in't it.
Heavy is the hand pressing down again again,
Something free something in chains we all came to play the game,
Will tomorrow come for the man stuck in the line,
There's a rumour circling, London's burning from within.
EHYY, London's burning,
And it doesn't matter at all, we try,
EHYY, London's burning,
Everything is nothing there's no future in sight,
EHYY (Ooohum), London's burning,
No it doesn't matter at how hard we try,
EHYY (Ooohum), London's burning,
Everything is nothing, everything is nothing.
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/the+temper+trap/londons+burning_21009552.html ]
My analogy isn't nothing on the streets,
No one cared and no one looked,
'Til she threw the judge's book,
Now who's the one to blame when the children always seem,
Dancing on their broken dreams, while London's burning from within
EHYY, London's burning,
And it doesn't matter at all, we try,
EHYY, London's burning,
Everything is nothing there's no future in sight,
EHYY (Ooohum), London's burning,
No it doesn't matter at how hard we try,
EHYY, London's burning,
Everything is nothing, everything is nothing.
[David Cameron]
Good morning, I've come straight from a meeting of the government's COBRA
Committee. This is criminality, pure and simple and it has to be defeated.
Streets are burning up from end to end.
[Male interviewee]
Err, yeah, this is payback in't it. Payback man.
Climb each other, fall again
[David Cameron]
This is criminality, pure and simple and it has to be defeated.
Streets are burning up from end to end.
[Male interviewee]
Err, yeah, this is payback in't it. Payback man.
End to end.
EHYY, London's burning,
And it doesn't matter at all, we try,
EHYY, London's burning,
Everything is nothing there's no future in sight,
EHYY (Ooohum), London's burning,
No it doesn't matter at how hard we try,
EHYY (Ooohum), London's burning,
Everything is nothing, everything is nothing.
Everything is nothing, everything is nothing.
I was 100% ready to believe that they were the actual lyrics. Top marks to the Guardian commenter!
if they were the lyrics, the review would be slightly different...
I think it's coffee time for me!
Is there that much difference between The Clash's London's Burning and The Temper Trap's take?
London's burning! London's burning!
All across the town, all across the night
Everybody's driving with full headlights
Black or white turn it on, face the new religion
Everybody's sitting 'round watching television!
London's burning with boredom now
London's burning dial 99999
I'm up and down the Westway, in an' out the lights
What a great traffic system - it's so bright
I can't think of a better way to spend the night
Then speeding around underneath the yellow lights
London's burning with boredom now
London's burning dial 99999
Now I'm in the subway and I'm looking for the flat
This one leads to this block, this one leads to that
The wind howls through the empty blocks looking for a home
I run through the empty stone because I'm all alone
London's burning with boredom now...
London's burning dial 99999
Who is this band?
Love the Gonzalez reference
Dougy has poetry tattooed on his arm. Deep.
it's a good point mathieson, and one I considered.
i guess the delivery was really everything. the clash certainly have some shit lyrics!
London Calling
(Strummer/Jones)
London calling to the faraway towns
Now that war is declared-and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls
London calling, now don't look at us
All that phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain't got no swing
'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing
CHORUS
The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
London is drowning-and I live by the river
London calling to the imitation zone
Forget it, brother, an' go it alone
London calling upon the zombies of death
Quit holding out-and draw another breath
London calling-and I don't wanna shout
But when we were talking-I saw you nodding out
London calling, see we ain't got no highs
Except for that one with the yellowy eyes
CHORUS
Now get this
London calling, yeah, I was there, too
An' you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!
London calling at the top of the dial
After all this, won't you give me a smile?
I never felt so much a' like
not comfortable with the temper trap trying to indigenise an event that has nothing historically to do with them.
Ha, yep...
they were always crap
Not sure how anyone can take a British music journo's odium towards a band for being wimpy seriously when they throw acclaim at the infinitesimally soporific Elbow.
From what I've heard of this album, it sounds overcooked.
overcooked?
no shit
Heeeeeeeeeey london's burnin'
They've landed the London support slot for the Rolling Stones Hyde Park gig later this year. Not bad going.
that phenomenal. well done danny rogers and co.