DZ Deathrays, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Tiny Hearts and Prins Thomas

TWO years between releases finds this Brisbane duo evolving beyond its self-dubbed “thrash party” roots in favour of songwriting maturity.

Black Rat: DZ Deathrays

TWO years between releases finds this Brisbane duo evolving beyond its self-dubbed “thrash party” roots in favour of songwriting maturity. It’s taking a risk of alienating their established fan base but, to DZ Deathrays’ credit, it works.

This new sound suits the pair better than the comparatively juvenile approach heard on the ARIA award-winning 2012 debut Bloodstreams and its preceding EPs.

Shane Parsons’s penchant for catchy, effects-heavy guitar riffs hasn’t diminished, nor has Simon Ridley’s hard-hitting work behind the kit, yet these 11 tracks represent a significant step forward. Aside from the monstrous headbanger Reflective Skull — the heaviest track they’ve released to date — the mosh-friendly moments of their early career are largely toned down. Instead, the pair demonstrates a firmer grasp on the mechanics of writing memorable, replay-friendly songs within the limited confines of guitar, drums and vocals.

This compact format is ideal for the live circuit, a realm wherein DZ Deathrays has plenty of experience both nationally and overseas.

Parsons mentions in the promotional material that “all we’ve done for two years is drink and tour”; fittingly, the bones of Black Rat were formed while on the road.

Lyrical depth or complexity has never been high on the duo’s priorities, and here, the trend of serviceable but unremarkable hooks continues.

Parsons’s tortured yowl remains a central force, but it’s just as often superseded by a more confident singing voice, and several tracks feature pretty vocal melodies. The subdued verses and explosive choruses of Keep Myself on Edge contain shades of Brisbane labelmate Violent Soho, whose successful sonic evolution on last year’s Hungry Ghost has undoubtedly been studied closely by many rock acts around the country.

Like that band, however, DZ Deathrays’ chief appeal is huge riffs and punchy percussion. On that front, Black Rat certainly delivers. Parsons describes it as “definitely a night-time record. After 9pm; that’s where it finds its place.” He’s right.

Distinctive first single, Northern Lights, is an impressive departure from the duo’s regular formula; its busy follow-up, Gina Works at Hearts — written from the perspective of a stripper who “just loves the attention” — could have been a Bloodstreams B-side.

This stylistic seesawing is typical of Black Rat.

It’s not quite a classic — album No 3, perhaps? — but it’s the sound of a confident band torn between its populist, party-friendly beginnings and a new-found ability to embrace glimpses of beauty amid the sonic destruction.

LABEL: I Oh You

RATING: 3.5 stars

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GENRE: Guitar

9 Dead Alive

Rodrigo y Gabriela

LABEL: ATO/Warner

RATING: 2.5 stars

MEXICAN acoustic guitar slingers Rodrigo y Gabriela seem caught in a Sergio Leone spaghetti western shootout that’s revolving in ever-decreasing circles. While the standard of playing and interplay between these heavy metal players turned nylon-string pickers and strummers remains high, the duo continues to exhibit compositional and arranging deficiencies and a lack of finesse and imagination. Even when they attempted to break the mould by recording their 2012 album Area 52 with a Cuban orchestra, they chose to recycle previously released works. Thematically, their latest offering adopts a more original approach. Each track on 9 Dead Alive celebrates individuals from history whose deeds and words resonate in the 21st century, from Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women of the Middle Ages, to Viktor Frankl, the eminent 20th-century Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. If nuances exist in Rod & Gab’s new pieces, they’re blown into crannies by the couple’s cluttered crash, bang, wallop approach. Only in the melancholic Megalopolis, which pays tribute to Lucila Alcayaga (aka Gabriela Mistral), the Chilean poet-diplomat-educator who in 1945 became the first Latin-American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, do the string-benders change a well-worn groove and match their virtuosity with an arrangement approaching cinematic flair. Elsewhere, repetitive melodies and rock riffs that reference Deep Purple et al, accompanied by mono-tonal stomp box, tend to dull the senses and diminish the wow factor of Gabriela’s ferocious flamenco-informed finger-style strumming and guitar-body generated percussion and Rodrigo’s quick-fire fills.

Tony Hillier

GENRE: Jazz

Alluvium

Tiny Hearts

LABEL: Alluvium Records

RATING: 4 stars

SYDNEY trumpeter Eamon Dilworth is a highly active musician. His quintet the Dilworths released their debut album in 2009, and then his Gypsy ska quartet Caravana Sun album had its debut in 2011, with a second album arriving last year. Between times, Dilworth has toured extensively in Europe and studied and played in the US, Australia and New Zealand, winning numerous awards in the process. Not bad for someone who has just turned 27.

Now Dilworth, together with drummer Paul Derricott, has formed a new quintet, Tiny Hearts, releasing a debut album of compositions by each band member. These pieces are described as “tales of travel, searching, thinking of the cosmos, loss and identity”.

Five of the 11 pieces are by the leader, including the opener, Brief Stint, which begins with a series of solo trumpet downward cadences, taken up by Dave Jackson’s alto as the ensemble arrives to slow things down, flatten out and then erupt into a raucous free-sounding sequence with accentuating drums.

Pianist Steve Barry’s original, Kanji, is a sumptuously pensive number carried by muted trumpet and alto with gracefully flowing piano ornamentation.

There’s a vaguely familiar lullaby-style melody to Derricott’s Big Sea Reprise, featuring wordless vocals from a trio of Elana Stone, Brian Campeau and the composer. Bassist Tom Botting wrote Balclutha, with an infectious tock-tock offbeat and stately harmonics.

Cosmontology by Jackson is a post-bop piece — a term that applies to most tracks — with a long-note theme against jabbing rhythms adding the composer’s driving solo and an imaginative, tension-building piano sequence.

John McBeath

GENRE: Dance

III

Prins Thomas

LABEL: Full Pupp

RATING: 3 stars

AS one of Norway’s holy trinity of cosmic and space-disco producers alongside Todd Terje and long-time studio partner Hans-Peter Lindstrom, Prins Thomas has been showcasing left-of-centre dance, Krautrock and progressive electronic — and largely analog — sounds for nigh on a decade. It’s a shame, then, that his third self-titled album doesn’t break ranks in any spectacular way. Released on his own Full Pupp imprint, III  lacks the polish of 2012’s II; Thomas Hermansen has fashioned an atmospheric but frenetic journey. As an album, the 11 tracks miss the cohesion and flow that make a Prins Thomas DJ set so entertaining, as crowds in Sydney and Melbourne saw last weekend. Hermansen declares there was “no great concept, no specific theme, no scheme, no plan” for III, and perhaps there should have been. For all its bouncy, looping basslines and thick strummy guitars, it seems disjointed. There are quality offerings, starting with opener Hans Majestat, vintage Prins Thomas with its offbeat anchored by deep bass and swirling synths. Arabist Natt (Dub) is memorable for its Middle Eastern influence, a mix of winding guitars matched with an escalating drum machine. The hazy guitars, soft heartbeat hump and subtle additions of Kavaler make it a standout, while Luftspeiling, with its bassline loop and sparing strumming, could be considered an album interlude if not for its 13-minute running time. It’s nonetheless a quality slow-building space jam and reflective of the second half of III being largely on a down-tempo, atmospheric tip. The latest musical diary from the Norwegian is not without brilliant moments but is best summed up by him as “musical (dis)harmony”.

Tim McNamara