I had a friend who had a Dutch uncle. We met him once, during the uncle’s visit to our fair shores. He was pleasant enough, albeit with that brusque conversational delivery that’s typically associated with Dutch nationals. He was frustrated with aspects of the Australian sociological experience – public transport, particularly, about which he had a point – though his objections to culinary matters held less water than a leaking dyke.
All of that has bugger all relevance to Dutch Uncles, and its album, Out of Touch in the Wild. For a start, Dutch Uncles aren’t even Dutch – they’re English for a start (though maybe they can trace their heritage to William of Orange) – and their radical approach to time tempo is anathema to the clichéd Dutch sense of order. Nothing is ever as it might be expected on Out of Touch in the Wild: Pondage emerges as Dungenlite, before morphing into a glistening white funk track. Bellio sparkles with the harmonic wonder of The Polyphonic Spree, before mysteriously spreading its wings toward the English new wave scene of 1982. Fester is the Tom Tom Club gazing in awe at African rhythms, Godboy is the best pop track never released in 1985 and Threads takes you to a place of cerebral exploration and psychedelic pop indulgence.
From there, we get Flexxin – in the wrong hands, this would be trite, but with Dutch Uncles it’s the lost Hall and Oates classic we’ve all wanted to embrace. Zug Zwang is relatively understated, a late afternoon stroll to the album’s prevailing 10pm dance. Phaedra is Hong Kong Garden devoid of its punk wash, Nometo is enigmatically pop and Brio is the best six-minute coda to an idiosyncratic pop record you’ve heard since David Byrne turned punk rock inside out in 1980. You can listen to this album 100 times, and you’re still none the wiser about where it’s going, or why it’s going there. And that’s a good thing.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Pondage
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: TOM TOM CLUB, ST VINCENT, KATE BUSH
In A Word: Syncopated.
