Review Summary: Forever young...
Queensland’s Bleeding Knees Club are a living embodiment of their work, in one sense. Despite being singed to a major for their debut, virtually everything else about
Nothing to Do smacks of appropriateness and suitability. It’s youthful, energetic garage rock noise, each tune bar one lasting for under 3 minutes. It’s as though these kids have short, age-dictated attention spans, and wouldn’t feel comfortable expanding out of the garage band or the boredom-blocking, under-3-minutes setting they have slotted so well into. But given the simple pleasures on offer here, you’d be stupid to want them to.
There’s a real warmth and refreshing quality to the dozen brisk cuts making up
Nothing to Do, which is a relief given the potential to tamper with authenticity that comes hand in glove with signing to a major, that wants to sell your records more than they want them to be ‘right’ before putting them out to the world on an fair artistic keel. It’d seem easy to say that they aren’t a mature bunch, given the subject matter and time-span of each song, but that’d be selling BKC short, somewhat. Their superficial, outward level is certainly not mature in the sense that it embraces youth, including its lack of desire to sit still, but dig a little deeper and
Nothing to Do shows off a band in firm control of their style.
The songs are short, simple, blasting editions of noise pop, and yes, given the album’s title one could assume that this is merely a product of its creators - being unable to go any further - but when everything is so tight, so pop-sharp and so well-produced, an impression begins to shape up of the band that, although appearing as young and carefree as the characters in their songs, or their style of sound, there’s something much older and wiser at play beyond their collective countenance.
There’s just not a duff track in the whole set, and although the album only lasts for 26 minutes, and there’s not much in the way of variety, such features do little to spoil the unadulterated fun. Starting with the dizzy and sharp ‘Teenage Girls’ the tracks don’t progress but rather adapt slightly enough to present a similarly guitar blazing, sweet laced pop wave, and that’s just fine. ‘Beach Slut’, ‘Problem Child’, ‘Who Are You’ – just a smattering of similarly delightful tunes on offer, that go to show that when you nail a sound sometimes you don’t have to venture that far away to be maintain success. As the incurably sweet and sugary, 50’s undercurrent of ‘Lipstick’ flutters out of my speakers in all its charming glory, Bleeding Knees Club seem more and more delightful and promising with each injection of joy they deliver upon pressing play. Give these kids a chance.
