It’s not quite nostalgia, but there are times when, in the midst of chaotic juggling of domestic and parental tasks, that I look fondly back upon days of relative simplicity, when temporal constraints were measured in days not minutes, the most complex question was which piece of last night’s pizza to consume for breakfast and emotional issues were self-medicated over a dozen beers at the pub with a bunch of your equally romantically inept friends.
To listen to Dollar Bar’s new album, Paddington Workers Club, is to drift back into such rose-coloured immature circumstances. The Jonathan Richman-via-Custard slacker-pop whimsy of Diff’rent for Gurls charms you off your feet and into a smelly share house bedroom; Hipster Mental Ward is biting social commentary through the lens of youthful envy. (You’re) Blind Baby is Big Star in the suburbs of Brisbane, State of Decay is a strained political critique of all manner of modern inconveniences and Animal Defences locates primeval reaction in a Sebadoh-sponsored environment.
The mood picks up with Half the Battle, and you’ve been transported to the jangly-indie-pop world of Melbourne’s hipster inner-north; My Fleas Have Dog is notable, if not perfectly memorable for its juvenile pop nature and the assertion of victory We Won the War – apparently, on account of the alcoholic and narcotic substances consumed in the cause – is probably pyrrhic, but fun while it lasts. And finally, there’s the almost fatalistic resignation of Everyone’s Everyone’s, and it’s all over. Don’t take it all too seriously, but sit back and bask in Dollar Bar’s simple pop glory.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Diff’rent for Gurls
If You Like These You’ll Like This: CUSTARD, DAVE EDMUNDS, MODERN LOVERS
In A Word: Slacker
