Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee! It’s summertime! People have synthesisers! Lollipops! Iceblocks! Equal parts The Postal Service, chip music, The Neverending Story soundtrack and Architecture In Helsinki, We Say Bamboulee’s Bush Tricks is pretty double rainbow.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee! It’s summertime! People have synthesisers! Lollipops! Iceblocks! Equal parts The Postal Service, chip music, The Neverending Story soundtrack and Architecture In Helsinki, We Say Bamboulee’s Bush Tricks is pretty double rainbow.
Doug Wright (brother of Al Wright – of Cloud Control front-man fame) fronts We Say Bamboulee, a synth-indie-poptastic three-piece with his two best friends, brothers Peter and Russell Fitzgibbon. Together they’re seemingly the most huggable band in Sydney ( I think I just threw up in my mouth a little – Ed) and when they get together to make music, a veritable explosion of major chord progressions, soul-satisfying harmonies and synth riffs and a whole boatload of melody.
Yeah, if you like melody, this is sure an album for you. Cutesy lyrics aside (“Sit down on the patio / And I will cook you breakfast”), this is melody in Yeasayer’s ballpark. Waiting In Wisconsin and Solid Gold especially get that sing-a-long part of your brain activated.
The trumpet solo in Funeral Social and live drums layered over phasered synth has a distinctly Chemical Brothers feel – like The Golden Path or like Where Do I Begin? – that type of music The Chemical Brothers used to make that was full of whatever the feeling is that makes you want to close your eyes and spin around in circles.
Indeed, some of these melodies seem like they’ve been in your head for a long time. “Please turn off the sun so we can count stars under the moon in the meadow at dark / Oh Monica please come back to the farm” the boys sing in three-part harmony on Monica over a syncopated drum beat. There are Ben Folds Five-style slide-up harmonies on this track, explosions of happy glittery synths and a dedication to… OK, I’ll just admit, I really like the cutesy lyrics. There’s something unpretentious and lovely and it’s tempered elsewhere on the album with heartfelt honesty too, like in Going Up (“You fucked me over / Maybe I just fell in love too soon”).
You know those photos that you take when you’re a teenager of all your friends laying on the grass with their heads together in the sun squinting and smiling? And their hair is tangled up together and there’s lens flare? Or when you hold both of someone’s hands and spin around in circles really fast until you’re dizzy and you fall on top of each other and then get up slowly and stumble around in funny circles? That’s this album. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
