Conversations about the ‘Australian sound’ tend to be fairly contentious, but that won’t prevent us from feeling an affinity with the emotional nuances of music made in this country. The debut EP from Adelaide four-piece Neighbourhood Threat carries a sound that’s indebted to several of Australia’s finest guitar bands, both past and present.
Opener Clinical Precision recalls not The Birthday Party or Crime & the City Solution but Rowland S. Howard’s solo work. Not only is it a slow burning number infested with glaring distorted guitars, but it’s overseen by a lachrymose narrator, who deadpans “I want you under my skin, I want you in my hands.” That said, frontman David Wilke’s vocals bear closer semblance to the Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster. Track three This Is Not A Dream affirms this impression by invoking the romantically forlorn stoicism that The Go-Betweens mastered on 16 Lovers Lane.
The EP’s most sprightly track is What I Want, which is a product of urban forces, lined with a layer of rustic longing. Watch What You Say has more than a touch of The Church’s spacey psychedelia, albeit with a distorted mean streak; and things wrap up with No Man’s Land, which sparks thoughts of Howard’s more het up work in These Immortal Souls.
While Neighbourhood Threat is a decidedly lo-fi affair, the band doesn’t pile on the grub in order to disguise their shortcomings. The whole EP has an assured air, which prevents Neighbourhood Threat from seeming like imposters, squeezing the aforementioned references into their work.
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
