Graham Reid | | 2 min read
Applause
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with lyrics on an insert sheet and in a framable cover by the band's Joshua Hunter.
Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .
Because Elsewhere is so inundated with full-length albums (and wishes to digress into essays about artists and unusual or off-radar records) we don't review singles.
But if we did . . .
For our money the best single of the year so far -- and we mean the best against all-comers, not simply the best local single – came from Auckland's Soft Bait.
It is New Leaf and elsewhere we described it as annoyingly addictive in a good way.
New Leaf is a fist-tight slice of the post-punk distillation of Iggy Pop, and arrives on the back of a nagging riff that brings to mind Romeo Void's (“I might like you better if we slept together”) Never Say Never.
The reductive lyrics take a powerful poke at gossip, misinformation, wagging tongues and the singer's role in/out of it all.
The video clip really brought it home too.
It – and the equally wired-up and taut single Long Line – the singer attributing his dysfunctional persona to a lineage of misfits and arguments – have been outstanding advance notice of this, Soft Bait's second album on which they have refined the art of saying and playing less.
Even more than on the menacing Killing Time and Sleep from their 2022 Plot Points debut, vocalist Joshua Hunter has perfected the sound of intimidating masculinity for New Leaf and the switchblade country rock of Long Line.
Long Line
The band's Iggy Pop-like energy comes to the fore on TNT and Neighbourhood on an album which opens in relentless and explosive form of Highly Recommended (“these things I like can highly recommend it”).
Singer Hunter seems to be the chief lyricist here and has a mainline into a special branch of contemporary American poetry where common language is retooled into new interpretations and understandings.
They skewer empty language and cliches on the cynical Applause; take on hearsay, rumours and misinformation (New Leaf); emotional entropy (the defeatist Oh Well with “they can't be helped . . . same old story” and real estate sales pitches playing on “lifestyle” cliches (Safe As Houses which, on paper, could a David Byrne lyric from around the More Songs About Buildings And Food period).
All this is delivered over a well-drilled machine of Patrick Hickley's hardened guitar riffs, Cameron Mackintosh's pugilistic drumming and Keria Paterson's bass.
If there's a same-same quality to Soft Bait's sound it only adds to the power and impact of these discrete songs cannoning off each other.
They've already got that “single of the year” in the bag and this album sounds like a contender in any sensible “best album” countback.
And consider Joshua Hunter's cover art. It is quite something, especially vinyl-size and looks like it comes from the Forties.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.
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