I Heart Hiroshima
The Rip
(Valve)
They need to stop worrying about the NME.
The year is 2009. Although I sympathise with the basic human desire for consistency, everything changes – nothing remains the same. It shouldn’t. It mustn’t. It doesn’t. At this stage, it seems that contemporary Australian music would be better served looking far closer to home than the UK for their inspiration. I mean, The Rakes, Maximo Park, The Raveonettes, The Futureheads…they aren’t all that. They really aren’t. Sure The Cribs and Good Shoes can be fine bands sometimes, but – it’s all a little similar, don’t you think? Chiming guitars, agitated energy, bouncy up-strokes, repetition, deadpan vocals…everyone does it, even down to the lack of bass (as championed by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The White Stripes) and the idea of bringing in Gang Of Four man Andy Gill for production duties (c.f. The Young Knives, The Rumble Strips, The Futureheads and this, the second album from I Heart Hiroshima).
Even in an isolated pocket like Brisbane, there are way more inspirational bands than the NME heads, and more inventive too: the No Wave trumpet-led garage experimentalism of The Deadnotes, the mid-80s skewed K Records groove of Kitchen’s Floor, the blessed-out psychedelic groove of Blank Realm, the deadpan bass-bass-and-drums noise combo No Anchor, for example. So what are we to make of the second album from Brisbane’s sweethearts I Heart Hiroshima? Should we applaud them for their consistency, for not deviating from the sound of their debut album, 2007’s
Tuff Teef, and their classic ‘Punks’ EP? Should we be proud because an Australian band has got the whole British thing down so pat?
Some see it as a positive that the music industry, in the shape of Street Press Australia, has embraced them. (They sent I Heart Hiroshima over to Perth’s One Movement conference, after – somewhat absurdly – they’d determined them to be Australia’s best ‘up and coming’ band. I Heart Hiroshima’s first EP,
3 Letter Word For Candy was released in March 2006.) Not so. Notoriously, the music industry is always four years behind the times. Looking for reasons why Australia is still suffering from cultural cringe? Um…
So let’s talk about the music. That won’t take long. Have you heard I Heart Hiroshima before? You know what to expect then.
I don’t mean to sound too cynical. It’s fine. I mean, really it’s fine – nervy, agitated, energetic, full of smart pop hooks and smarter male-female vocal interplay. Everything I said about those NME bands above – and well-executed too. Single ‘Shakeytown’ and the aspirational ‘South’ both ricochet around like you expected the Grates’ second album to, but never did. ‘Four Sails’ pleads like a bunch of recalcitrant Dunedin students let out on day release. The excellent album closer ‘Listen’ plaintively begs for a little understanding. Drummer and live focus Susie Patten particularly sounds on edge as she launches into her staccato, clipped vocal parts. The two boys – Cameron Hawes and Matt Somers – never do less than their part. And yet, next to I Heart Hiroshima’s frantic and entertaining live show, this album can’t help but disappoint. It all feels a fraction safe, a little staid. Indeed, it feels almost exactly like
Tuff Teef only with the grungy edges cleaned up by a mainstream indie producer – which is what it is.
For me, I Heart Hiroshima’s recent cover of The Chills’ classic ‘Pink Frost’ summarised the problem: it’s a duly reverential, lovingly realised version, Somers and Patten beautifully harmonising on some gorgeous vocals. And Somers certainly manages to communicate some of the decayed emotion Martin Phillipps must’ve felt when he wrote the song. Listen closer, though. Listen back to the original. Where’s that mischievous, show-stopping bass line threading in and out of the delicate guitars, sonorous and grand? What’s up with that? The cover is lacking in subtlety. It’s too bashed out.
I Heart Hiroshima can be a great live band. It’s my fervent hope that one day, they will make an album that reflects that fact. This isn’t it.
Everett True