Melbourne duo Gypsy & The Cat are already an enigma, and with their final album are ensuring they’re remembered as a phenomenon.
From the get-go, their third full length album Virtual Islands takes the listener on an idiosyncratic and deeply varied journey into pop music heaven. Opener I Took a Wrong Turn is almost industrial, this is offset by the sweet, ambient vocals of frontman Xavier Bacash. Tragedies of a Love Song draws comparisons to The Cure, while Inside Your Mind channels MGMT. Album centrepiece Odyssey of the Streets is stunning. Grandiose, orchestral, choral pop music that resembles something prog rock masters Yes might do if they were an indie dream-pop duo from Melbourne. By remarkable contrast, closer Naomi takes a minimalist approach, featuring nothing more than vocals and acoustic guitar.
Best track award goes to the smooth, lush, soothing, swooning sounds of Paris.
Gypsy & The Cat are fusing all manner of sounds, ideas and influences from the last 30-odd years of pop music, adding their own highly distinctive flavour to the mix, and making it stick like superglue.
Virtual Islands is a quirky and ridiculously enjoyable pop masterpiece. This is where real, good modern pop music resides, not being judged by Delta Goodrem and Ricky Martin on your prime-time TV screens, or rolling off the production line for airplay on plastic pop radio stations. Gypsy & The Cat is exploring what pop music can be, not just rolling out three-minute pop hits for the 15 minute appeasement of the undemanding. Virtual Islands is classic pop music.
BY ROD WHITFIELD
