Review Summary: Museum is a record that bounces from wall to wall with inexhaustible energy, while also featuring a remarkable display of maturity as some tracks sit and groove with the space and calmness that other bands never achieve.
“She was a smart artist. She looks you in the eye, and she kisses with a rubber fist, and it feels good,” sings Ball Park Music frontman Sam Cromack. The parallels left for a journalist to draw are plenty - I could say Cromack was a smart artist. I could say Ball Park’s music hits me with a rubber fist. I could certainly say that it feels good.
But I’m going to kick off today’s review with a little aside that Ball Park Music are from my hometown of Sunny Brisbane and to this day remain one of my favourite groups to come from the area, along with the criminally slept-on Jakarta Criers (the second EP of which I will review at some later date.). Ball Park made their joyful power-indie-pop-rock debut in 2011. They met at a QUT course, and, after considerable airplay from triple J, partnered with EMI to release their full length debut. This review is not a review of that album (although it is very good.) This review is a retrospective look at their second album, ‘Museum’, released in 2012, just one year after their debut.
Museum is a record that bounces from wall to wall with inexhaustible energy, while also featuring a remarkable display of maturity as some tracks sit and groove with the space and calmness that other bands never achieve. The album roars to life with “Fence Sitter”, a break-neck tempo track that opens on a single, ascending riff between Paul Furness’s sizzling organ and Dean Hanson’s throaty guitar sound. Daniel Hanson, brother of Dean, rips a fill across his drums and we’re off, the bass guitar of Jen Boyce thumping along with infectious enthusiasm and unmistakable grit. The track cascades up and down, chip tune-esque synths warping around the listener’s head as the soft, boyish vocals of lead singer-songwriter Sam Cromack ease us into the tone of the record. There’s plenty to hear on this track alone. The straightforward riff gives way into notably sparse verses which feature Cromack’s voice paired with Furness’s trademark organ sound, the frantic drums all the while propelling us forward, ever forward, at a speed nearly too fast to think.
The theme of big organ chords continues onto Surrender, the second track and lead single, which features a very tight percussion groove executed at full volume, and jangly acoustic guitar to drive the harmony forward. Again, the standout element of Jen Boyce’s bass playing drives the groove home, and meets in the middle between drums and piano. A multi-tracked layered choir also makes an appearance, and Cromack sings about being “a shotgun filled with paint” and “A helicopter flying in the sun with no guns”. No idea what he means. Sam, if you’re reading this, please send me an email so I can find out what the *** you are talking about here.
As the album moves into the slow burner of “Coming Down”, one gets the chance to really appreciate the textures that Ball Park employ. The band has a traditional five-piece ensemble of keyboards, drums, guitars, bass and harmonised vocals - Jen Boyce providing a nice upper harmony and female backing vocal to round out Cromack’s uncomplicated delivery - and the pieces sit with expert arrangement. Lead guitar, keyboards and bass all extensively use effects across the board (no pun intended) on this record, with each texture paired to a fitting musical moment. It reminds me of a film soundtrack.
The instruments can be wild, distorted and unrecognisable, or simple and familiar. It is characteristic of the Ball Park crew that these textures are generally organised into the most appropriate of contexts. Going back to “Coming down”, we hear some nice acoustic piano, the band quietly comping in the background. Keyboardist Paul Furness even layers some trombone in the second half. My inner brass player loves him for it.
“Happiness and Surrounding Suburbs” featured a two-part closing track that harked back to the opening tune, and on “Museum”, Cromack pulls a similar trick. Tracks 4 & 5 are respectively titled “Bad Taste Blues Part I” and (you guessed it) “Bad Taste Blues Part II”. Part 1 is a four-on-the-floor stomping, simmering rock track that despite its insistence has never stuck in my head or really blown me away - but, that is the point, one soon finds out, as its function is mostly to build the listener’s hype for Part II, which fades in over the previous track with the unmistakable Darren Hanson guitar sound strumming away before the drums kick us into a song arguably more energetic and upbeat than even Fence Sitter. The soaring vocal harmonies lift you up, up, and over the chorus - “I can’t complain, but I will” about the nature of being a privileged rich kid, but still inexplicably unhappy. This is the thesis statement of Ball Park Music. This is where it all comes from, folks.
The album slows itself down on Cry With One Eye, another tune with a similar theme of privileged depression, this time far more emotional than economic. The soft trombones make a reappearance here, and so does the idea that this tune is really less of a song and more of a scene setter, a mood builder, a piece designed to prepare you for what comes next. Cromack sings something about having “got no heart, got no heart...” and the album hits its thematically lowest, darkest point yet. Then the tape stops, one of the sounds reverses, Hanson clicks his sticks four times, and “Great Display Of Patience” explodes through the speakers in a blaze of glory.
“Great Display Of Patience” is one of those songs that reminds me why I like music. It is a song that puts me in a good mood instantly, 100% of the time, and takes on new meanings and contexts depending on where I am in my life. I struggle to think of many other tunes where a single, overriding emotion is delivered as succinctly as Cromack does here. The often-overplayed theme of new love is brought to a head in what might be the defining song for what new love actually feels like - A delightful piano-led motif dances over a thumping rock groove propelled forward by Boyce and (Daniel) Hanson on bass and drums respectively. The guitars growl and skip along with the groove, and the lyrics cascade through talking about all the little things about the world that you notice when you’re in love, the good and the bad, the bright and the dark, the descriptions of the world are totally honest and fresh and Cromack’s voice crescendos to a point, he shouts, and Boyce hits her distortion pedal - you can hear the pure joy, the unfettered, unashamed ecstasy as the vocals again soar through the chorus - “And she’s mine now. She’s *mine*, now. And I waited a long time…” The line is cheesy in print, but god dammit, if you didn’t realise you need to actually listen to this song by this point then you bloody should have now. This song makes the album. It is a masterpiece love song. I had to write my longest run-on sentence yet to properly convey how well it does its job. I don’t know who it was that Sam wrote this song about, but she better have married him.
High Court follows Display Of Patience brilliantly with a rhythm section feature that is probably the best percussion work on the record, a relaxed, open drum groove with woodblock and hi-hats over punchy, compressed snare and a bass sound that spans octaves and pulls your stomach up and down as if the guitar was side-chained (look it up) to your vital organs. It’s also a great vocal moment for Cromack, as his voice effortlessly leaps into falsetto to deliver wistful, long tones and some more of his trademark bizarre lyrics sunk so deep in metaphor that they might as well be a nonsense poem. The words themselves almost give me Edward Lear vibes with the level of strangeness and impenetrablity of metaphor. Make of it what you will. There’s also an explosive harmonised guitar solo from Dean Hanson toward the end, and Boyce takes up the vocal melody on the last time around. I really, really like this track.
The home stretch of Museum backs off a little. “Pot of Gold” and “Cost Of Lifestyle” see Cromack at his most lyrically and economically cynical, denouncing materialism and advertising as well as the endless grind of working for The Man. It’s classic punk/rock territory lyrically and the two tracks being placed back-to-back make the proverbial Museum feel like it has a little cordoned-off section that you have to walk around and notice on your meandering way to the exit. That’s not to say these tracks are badly written or placed. After the musical and thematic intensity of the previous stretch of five(!) tracks it’s a welcome change of pace to just shake your fist at the omnipresent god of industry for a little while. Keep shaking it, but rein it in when you get to the Harbour Of Lame Ducks, because this is the only track where the record really, really slows for a minute and nothing HUGE happens for a bit, while still keeping within the parameters of a rock song. The standout here is Furness’s sniper-accurate organ playing, popping little chordal rhythms over the chorus and bobbing around like the lame ducks in the proverbial harbour. Then Dean Hanson plays another harmonised guitar solo and we all forget that the ducks are lame for a little while.
The final track, “What’s On Your Mind”, is a particularly frank and honest look at the reality of being in a touring band. Cromack sings about being away from his lover for long stretches of time, playing shows and making money, while the unnamed lover to which the song is addressed sings back to Sam (in the voice of bassist Jen Boyce.) “There’s a simple little life if you want it”, proclaims the bridge of the tune, which is dressed in the now-familiar Ball Park coat of paint. The song is slow but heavy, and the bridge on which Boyce sings features a nice key change and Rhodes keyboard part from Paul Furness.
Then guitar feedback growls, Daniel Hanson flams with anguish, and the final line of the record is hammered into the listener’s eardrum - “Everything’s okay, and it sounds good to me” - presumably something said by a band member who was just looking to ***ing get on with it. The refrain fades out, then fades back in, slows, loses clarity, and Ball Park Music’s “Museum” ends with guitar noises and stray drum hits as the band members prepare to vacate the studio. It is like losing consciousness watching tv, as the noises of the programme mix with your own brain’s imagery and when you wake up, you can’t quite remember which was which.
This record, while decently known in Australia, is still yet to be widely discovered by the rest of the world. Ball Park Music are celebrated yet obscure, successful locally but also still on the fringe as far as the international music scene goes. Perhaps one day in the future they will achieve the success required to open a Museum elsewhere. Fortunately the music is and always will be with us, and as far as I’m concerned their contribution to the vibrant idea of what it means to be a youth in Australia today. Jingoistic platitudes aside, Museum is a fantastic rock record and an astonishingly creative and mature sophomore effort from a new-ish band at the time. Its slow moments are always rewarded by explosive confidence or thoughtful, secondhand introspection and its high points are worthy of inclusion in many all time classics lists. I am, however, still waiting for them to actually do a gig at the Queensland museum. Time will tell.
Written by Fin Taylor.
