Review Summary: No.
If you're unfamiliar of the tale of the wolf in sheep's clothing, the fable is about a conniving wolf, trying to discover ways to eat up the sheep in the paddock. The masterplan is to kill a single sheep, skin it and wear its wool, sneaking into the paddock disguised as another sheep. He thinks it'll work, too...until, of course, the farmer picks it out as the sheep he wants for supper and kills it. The truth comes out, and the dangers of disguise are the moral.
Let's now shift this analogy across to Short Stack, the Australian band with a seemingly endless supply of teenage girls, Sydney Morning Herald reviewers and Rolling Stone Australia editors to squeal and scream in accordance to every movement they make. But being a teen mag pin-up is
so 2009 – with their new haircuts, “dark” music videos and Johnny Depp...whoops, sorry, Hunter S. Thompson...referencing album title, Short Stack are after some kind of credibility this time around with their second album,
This is Bat Country. Consider the band a wolf, consider their sheep's wool the aforementioned changes in their appearance and consider the band still as irritating and hollow as they were the very first time they suggested that you kill your boyfriend in order for the two of you to be together.
In keeping with the “serious” new aesthetics of the band, Short Stack is now all about crunching half-step-down guitars, dirty rave synths and ripping off bigger, better bands – amongst them Queen, Green Day and post-
Sing the Sorrow-era AFI. Opener “Bat Country” summarises this for all of its good and bad points. Good, because for the first thirty seconds or so, you might even enjoy the guitar work and even mistake it for not being Short Stack. Bad, because the second that the second Shaun Diviney opens his nose – or throat, or whatever it is he uses to sing – to hit you with lyrics like “We're too gorgeous to die” and “You are a shooting star and I'm a demon,” the reality crashes down upon the listener like the proverbial tonne of bricks. The bricks then lay upon your head for the better part of an hour, with a few more occasionally hurtling down to add salt to the wounds. The truth of
This is Bat Country is that any illusions of improvement are just that – mirages off in the distance that fans will rush to only to be found swiping at sand in the middle of the desert.
That's not to say
This is Bat Country is no different to 2009's
Stack is the New Black – here, the trio (rounded out by drummer Bradie Webb and bassist Craig Mathieson...whoops, sorry, Andy Clemmensen) have had a go at acoustic ballads, orchestral waltzes and even a sea shanty, amongst others. This expansion simply represents a progression into a different kind of ear pain to the red-cordial rush of
Stack is the New Black – kind of like being stuck next to a mouthy scene girl with an Emily The Strange shirt on a plane as opposed to a crying baby. “Werewolves” is sincere to the point of embarrassment, with its choppy string quartet arrangements and cringeworthy chorus of “We're werewolves! We're werewolves! Arrooooo!” - that last part isn't a joke, by the way; he literally howls in falsetto like some kind of three-week-old kitten rather than an actual werewolf. Meanwhile, “Die Young, Stay Pretty” is perhaps the best example of the continuous wolf in sheep's clothing analogy on the entire album. In this instance, the band has listened to
The Black Parade, sniffed glue and then put together what sounds like a mix of MCR,
The Pirates of Penzance,
Muppet Treasure Island and something from the remake of
Sweeney Todd (again with the Johnny Depp thing?) - in other words, complete musical torture. It's a shot from the band at musical maturity, but a complete misfire upon realisation that their balls haven't even dropped yet.
Essentially, there is nothing you can do while Short Stack clutch onto their remaining fifteen minutes. All that is asked of you is to not get the wool pulled over your eyes – don't even try and make out that this band are any less atrocious, or that their presence in the Australian music scene is anything short of cancerous. For all the obsession with murder, death, violence and – of course – vampires on this album, the only thing that comes close to shocking on
This is Bat Country is the realisation that the band will probably get away with being another sheep in the paddock, quietly devouring other far better bands when the farmer isn't looking. You have been warned.
