Review Summary: Aiming for greatness, this army still needs a bit more training.
As evidenced by the excellent documentary of earlier this year, Something In The Water, there is a plethora of very popular (and often rather excellent) musical acts coming out of Perth in Western Australia. Not only are there the established bands (Eskimo Joe, Gyroscope, Karnivool et al), but a selection of up-and-comers hoping to one day be mentioned in the same breath as the bands previously listed.
It’s obvious that Sugar Army are quite keen to get to this stage, having worked tirelessly over the past couple of years with tours on the other side of the country and delivered an intriguing EP (
Where Do You Hide Your Toys?) with promise for the future. Said future has materialised in the form of their long-awaited debut album,
The Parallels Amongst Ourselves. Whilst there’s still a selection of excellent tunes on offer here, the quartet struggle significantly to capture the listener’s attention for the record’s entirety and get caught up in what can ultimately be described as attempting to do too much with too little to back it all up.
The main fault in
Parallels as an album is how much time is spent on exploring and experimenting with the band’s sound. Granted, it’s a debut album, and such a trait is defensible. However, it really wouldn’t be such an issue if it wasn’t established so early on exactly what works. The music of Sugar Army, quite obviously to even a passing listener, works best when the quartet is able to successfully amalgamate brooding overtones with alt-rock accessibility. With fast-paced, intricate rhythms, guitar that threatens to leap out of the speakers and a rollicking vocal line from distinctive frontman Patrick McLaughlin that keeps it together, single “Tongue in Cheeks” wraps everything that Sugar Army do well into a punchy three-and-a-half-minute radio-ready tune. Another solid example is “Acute”. Whilst slightly more down-tempo, the song still packs in a hyperactive fuzz riff during its verses and culminates into an incessantly catchy hook that you can pick up within seconds but will remain in your head hours after you’ve heard it.
So where does
Parallels lose its way? It’s hard to specify it down to one stage of the record, but if pressed you’d have to blame the album’s second half on what could have been a very solid Australian release. Despite its clever title, “Maybe the Boy Who Cried Wolf Was Just Paranoid” is uninspired and meandering in its droning guitar and its pseudo-tribal percussion. Meanwhile, attempts at picking up the pace once more (“You Are a Possession, Up for Sale”) are stunted and muffled by boring filler like “Building Castles” and the overlong “That’s A Damn Fine Cliché” (strike two on the song-name-better-than-actual-song situation). Guitarist Todd Honey makes a lot of noise with his instrument, but rarely is it anything of substance – the noise and distortion shoots for pretentious shoegaze but mostly comes off as plain annoying. What a shame far more attention is given to this element of the band’s music as opposed to percussive powerhouse James Sher, who is audibly raring to send every track into a frenzy but ends up having his fills choked and condensed in the process.
There’s enough substance in
The Parallels Amongst Ourselves to warrant listens and interest from older fans and people who have just started paying attention. Having said that, don’t go expecting anything mindblowing and captivating – the band have sadly created an album that will elicit “it’s okay, I guess” responses as opposed to the “next big thing” responses that the album’s highlights promise.
