Songs

Songs are a hundred words for pleasant. They have pretty guitar melodies and boy-girl harmonies and play the sort of indie pop collected by bookish kids who want to be cuddled. Their self-published debut has already been snapped up by Popfrenzy, the local home of artists like Camera Obscura and Saturday Looks Good To Me, and will be given a second release at the end of the month.

Recorded live to tape on “esoteric and vintage recording equipment” at Tardis Studios, it is a mixture of cute rock and twee pop that sees the Sydney four-piece rehearsing their most non-threatening postures. There are some light surf-rock guitar solos in one song and a cheap keyboard in another.

Songs is a springboard more than a destination. It sounds lovely, but lacks substance - as if the hardest part of the creative process had been coming up with something to harmonise about. It proves the band can write a decent pop song, but that they’ve yet to master memorable ones.

The exception is ‘Keeping It Clean’, which is the highlight of this release. It has a bedroom poet feel with an acoustic-by-numbers jangle and nonsense lyrics, but something sets it apart from the rest. It has that wonderful quality impossible to put into words - an unmistakable heart. It reminds me of falling in love in other cities.

Their album, soon to be recorded for Popfrenzy, could go either way.