Big Time

It seems a lot has happened to Bitch Prefect between their self-titled EP and their debut long-player. Where they once concerned themselves with American dreams, from the loss of a Hollywood starlet to their dreamt escape to California, they’re now firmly in the realm of small-town blues, deadend lifestyles and - as they put it so mournfully in the lead single - “bad life decisions.” They’re now resigned to their ambitionless take on routine, forming a record that is less about daydreams and more about the reality faced at the end of them.

But Big Time isn’t a place where you’re left to dwell in shallow depressions. Picking through your coin pocket for beer money is about as harsh a reality as the band ever touch on, and in this collection of pop swoons you get the impression that, even if shit gets desperate, you’ll have an alright time on the way down.

Strapped for cash on ‘Dollar Blues'; hopelessly, distractedly in love on ‘Guess the Person'; living in denial on ‘Okay': these are the universal complaints of almost every Australian who has ever been pushed to the end of the pay cycle (if there’s a pay cycle at all) and there’s a certain appeal to all these situations. Even a concept as disturbing as hiding a girlfriend’s dead body in the freezer to keep her cold through an Adelaide heat wave is sang with a smirk, while the appeal of partnering off with a new squeeze to the lengthening of the daylight hours or getting wasted afterhours goes without saying. Bitch Prefect romanticise failure, tap into the freedom of limited options and smile through all the complaints.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Bitch Prefect - Bad Decisions by bedroom suck

Big Time is the type of record that crosses age, occupation and tax brackets, and much of that relatable quality lies in the childish groans of vocalists Scott O’Hara and Liam Kenny, both of whom tend to inhabit the voice of the everyman. So when Kenny sings, “We were playing guess the person dead or alive/But the only person I was thinking about dead or alive was you,” it could just as easily be from the perspective of the forlorn teenager in the backseat as the cheating husband in the front. They piece together the events of Friday night before sleeping off the regrets on ‘Sunday’, and it recalls all the times you’ve done the same. These are songs written for all of us.

From the confused drawl of drunken disconnection on ‘After Dark’ to the depressingly anthemic ‘Bad Decisions’, Bitch Prefect don’t exactly open up to emote feelings all their own, but manage to hit the nail on everyone’s head. Across the record they admit, “There are other things I could have done a little better”; drawl, “I’m gonna go sit on the couch and relive the bad times”; and finally manage to sum up all the regret and self-delusion by repeatedly shrieking, “I’m okay” through the limping sprawl of ‘Okay’. This is a record that exudes eerily relatable drudgery, yet delivers it all with a grinning sense of charm.