Earlier this year, The Great Emu War Casualties (TGEWC) released their debut album ‘Public Sweetheart No. 1’ to great acclaim (reviewed by me here, and described as being an album filled with wry intelligent humour, carried on a bed of gentle pop and soaring anthems). In the intervening time, member Saskia Clapton was part of Marlophone who recently released their debut album ‘Remembered Adventures in Widescale’ (reviewed by me here).
Now, in a rapid fire return, the band is back with an EP, ‘Mal du siècle’, a French literary and cultural term describing a deep sense of ennui, melancholy, disillusionment, and world-weariness. Fitting sentiments for the current climes.
The Great Emu War Casualties embarked upon a trip of a lifetime to record ‘Mal du Siecle’. They left their home city of Melbourne and travelled halfway around to a studio in the borders between Joshua Tree and the Yucca Valley, overlooking the Mojave Desert. Their producer shared a similarly unpredictable streak: American-based Englishman Alex Newport, a former noise-rock/metal musician now renowned as a Grammy-nominated collaborator for Bloc Party and At The Drive In.
Opening track starts with swirling synths before dual vocals enter over a pattering drum, sparse and dark, slightly ominous with an arching melody. The instrumentation ripples like a pebble skipping across a still lake. This is an expansive cinematic track: filled with yearning as they sing ‘silence is everything’.
‘Groovy’ starts with a merry-go-round swirl before the song launches into a soaring pop melody. A swerve in direction sees a lull with a sampled voice before launching into the jingle jangle chorus with full gusto. Singer/guitarist Joe Jackson says:
When I say ‘Groovy’ I am Mike Myers as Austin Powers in my head. This song is about both the desire to and inability to change. Honesty and its difficulty. There is something toxic inside of these 3 minutes in it, hence the Liz Taylor bridge cameo. A bartender recently described my order of two gin and tonics as ‘Groovy’. Someone behind me on this train is coughing so much they might choke to death. I’m going to watch a movie.
‘Cold Food Ave’, a recent single, is hyperactive and brash, replete with a stream-of-conscious delivery from Jackson and a great deal of verve. It’s a song filled with buzzsaw energy, scything guitars and an anthemic shouty delivery with more swagger than a yacht with full sails caught in a tornado.
‘PFA’ takes off with the same verve: rapidly paced and a buzzsaw guitar riff, shouty singing and a stabbing instrumentation before drifting away, changing direction into something more reflective. Final track ‘Disco’ launches with a motorik synth riff before skipping off with a jaunt that reminds me of Talking Heads with its almost samba rhythms.
Jackson says of the EP:
We approached ‘Mal Du Siecle’ off the back of releasing the ‘Public Sweetheart No.1’ album with an aim of making a record that doesn’t sound like it’s from the same band. Aside from one verse in one song, the acoustic guitar is out. There’s a drum machine in there in places too. Instead of writing the whole thing in a Melbourne bedroom we put a lot of it together in a Californian desert. ‘Public Sweetheart No.1’ was a very introverted record whereas ‘Mal du Siecle’ is attempting to make sense of the world around it. Predictably failing but also that might be part of the point.
For an EP named after a malaise of the soul, ‘Mal du siècle’ is anything but listless. The Great Emu War Casualties take the ennui and disillusionment of the title and turn it inside out, answering world-weariness with buzzsaw guitars, jangling choruses and moments of real cinematic beauty. It’s a brief but varied collection, sliding from shadowy introspection to joyous, shouty abandon without ever losing the wit and warmth that made ‘Public Sweetheart No. 1’ such a delight.
If this is how the band responds to troubled times, then melancholy has rarely sounded so invigorating. A short, sharp shot of brilliance that leaves you wanting more, and quickly.
‘Mal du siècle’ is out today and available to download and stream here.
In exciting news, TGEWC are off the the US next year to play at the The New Colossus Festival– details below.
