The S Bends 2019

OK, more Australian guitar pop. The S-Bends are from a different end of the Australian guitar pop spectrum as Dumb Things (see previous post) and a different city (Sydney). While Brisbane’s Dumb Things thrilled with gloriously melodic, slightly wonky, low-key-charming, guitar pop, The S-Bends glorious music has a kind of equally low-key-charming appeal, but also ambitious grandeur. Here’s the opening track “Datsun”:

Unlike many New Zealand bands, The S-Bends are another young Australian band happy to acknowledge “the ever pervasive sound of 80s/90s Australian and New Zealand indie guitar music” as an influence.

Which may be why the featured track here, “Datsun” shares a similar storytelling approach to post-punk guitar-pop as Don McGlashan in Blam Blam Blam and The Mutton Birds (eg: the similarly car-themed “White Valiant”).

It may also be why the album “Nothing Feels Natural to Me” reminds me in tone and sound of The Go-Between’s dark masterpiece “Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express”, arguably that band’s most literary and considered collection, made when they were at their peak, but before they realised that.

And there’s shades here of the kind of atmosphere (without the vocal melodrama) The Triffids regularly conjured – like the song is transporting the listener into scenes from a movie, or into the pages of a short story. Just as The Triffids’ Jill Birt provided a shift in tone and delivery, The S-Bends’ Madeleine Er takes the lead vocals on “Vitamin D Deficiency” and “Indoor Plants” and shares lead vocals on the sublime centre-piece “Two States” – all stand-out tracks on an album that I can sense is going to grow even stronger with further listening.

The descriptive storytelling on the album often conjures a mood of personal and social unease but also a strong sense of place and wonder. The care with words matches the classic songcraft, the arrangements, and the unfussy recording, which was engineered and produced by The S-Bends’ Jacob Dawson-Daley.

I didn’t need another favourite Australian album this year, and wasn’t looking for one, but here we go again… The S-Bends “Nothing Feels Natural to Me” was released last week on the Stable Label.