You're a Long Way Out

You've Got to Hear the Music - Dimmer

I caught about ten minutes of these guys at the Big Day Out and was moderately impressed, so I decided it was past time I grabbed their new album. These guys won a bunch of awards last year and the music press was absolutely stoked because Shayne Carter, the main guy behind this band, has been around in a variety of different bands for twenty years, most of which were critically acclaimed and commercially ignored (I've been meaning to buy some Straitjacket Fits for years...). I guess I've always had a soft spot for these ancient Flying Nun guys who've been doing their thing for way longer than kiwi rock has been cool, but I never seem to get around to expressing it with my wallet.

The album is very languid and relaxed. Very kiwi in some ways. It begins with some upbeat jazzy songs, including the single 'Come Here', but turns towards slower moodier tracks later on. It's all guitar based stuff, but on almost all the tracks there's a lot of electronica going on in the background. As you'd expect from someone who's been at this for twenty years, Carter's a pretty decent songwriter, and he mixes all sorts of influences together to make some unique and original music.

This is normally a recipe for the kind of thing I'd really like, but I'm not so excited about this album. Sure, it's OK, I quite like the moodiest songs, 'Case', 'Concentration' and 'Only One That Matters', and even the soppy closer, 'Finality'. But unfortunately the album as a whole just doesn't do it for me, I think it's just a little overtly poppy and unadventurous. I feel kind of bad for not liking it so much, Shayne Carter being a bigshot local indie musician and all, but the last time I felt that way about an album, it really grew on me a lot after I wrote the review, so maybe that will happen here too.

Oh, and it comes with a bonus live acoustic CD (which is almost as long as the album itself). I'd rate it about the same as the album. The low point is the ten minute 'Seed' which just goes on for too long, and the high point is 'If I Were You', which I believe is an old Straitjacket Fits song.