On their debut album, Talons make a slightly unnerving sound. It isn’t a hostile assault at all, a little like And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Dead at their most immediate; Talons bristle more so than intimidate. They thrash away at intros and drop rock riffs and atmospheric passages as if completely interchangeable, occasionally working these songs up into surprisingly panoramic crescendos. It’s admirable stuff seeing they use rock’s most rudimentary tool – the three piece – to make all this happen. A track like 'Bayonet' at the album’s centre is densely populated with hooks and changes, the bass moving in one direction, the guitar in another while the drummer holds to both ends together. They work together.
The singer’s voice (he’s not credited directly but his name is either Benjamin, Christian or Mitchel) is great to listen to, capable of a drunken croak or a raspy, nasally wail. And thus this band holds true to one of my favourite aspects of Australia’s noise-rock scene: that it tends to favour unusual voices, be it the twang of our accent juxtaposed against such an American sounding music or the lack of masculine bravado or both, as evidenced here. Peers of Talons such as The Nation Blue, Black Level Embassy and Further all share this, they all sound to me like outlets for the difficult side of otherwise ordinary men, and probably are.
To surmise, I like this record the more I listen to it. It isn’t perfect - the production is too slick for my tastes (but probably not yours) and they lack the pathos of a more experienced band – but Talons is worth your attention. More importantly, this band gives all indication that they could develop into something extraordinary should they find an audience and in consideration of their debut, they give me no reason to think they don’t deserve one.
Ian Rogers