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Howling Bells
Howling Bells
Howling Bells



Summer is shit, isn't it? You get too hot, plants start shoving their sex cells up your nose without so much as a by-your-leave, there are people and worse, children, everywhere, and men start wearing shorts. Imagine, then, the misery of living in a land where summer reigns eternal, and if that isn't bad enough, there are poisonous snakes.

Small wonder that so many of the new wave of fantastic indie bands issuing from Australia, (the new Canada, it seems) have more of the "Woe is me" than the "G'day!" about them. Like compatriots The Panics and The Morning After Girls, for Howling Bells, black is the colour, and mournful is the game.

And here they are, finally, with their debut album, to drape a cloth over the cage of the squawking punk-funk parrot and soothe our fevered brows with a cold compress of dark country crooning and twanging guitar. Eschewing the meat-and-potatoes garage rock of their homeland's recent big exports, The Vines or Jet, Howling Bells have crafted a unique, glossy, gothic gloom, centred about Juanita Stein's luscious, languorous tones. While the band have a country-punk energy reminiscent of Sons And Daughters or Tarnation, it's her versatile voice that really makes them. On 'Wishing Stone' her keening, plaintive little-bird-lost tones are set off by bare, brittle riffs that circle like menacing scavengers. On 'Low Happening' however, we're find Juanita in Karen O-esque blues holler mode. It's on standouts 'Broken Bones' and the rapturous 'Setting Sun' with its widescreen, incandescent guitars, however, that reveal its full stretch, a swooning swoop of sky-soaring gorgeousness.

'Howling Bells' is the perfect soundtrack to picturesque summer melancholy, lying in your baking back yard with a mint julep and a frown. It veers close, however, to being too- polished. Like a strip from Dita Von Teese, on first impressions, you get the feeling that there's no real sex, no rough edges to their seductiveness, just a poised china-doll hauteur. While Sons And Daughters are energised by the murderous fury lurking in Adele Bethel's voice, and the Duke Spirit by a harder rock edge, Howling Bells run the risk of being just picturesque melancholy.

On closer inspection, though, little flourishes of wit (like the "la la la" refrain in 'The Bell Hit') and a driving sense of rhythm steer it the right side of stylised. Stein's deftness with a heartsick lyric doesn't hurt either, as on 'Velvet Girl' a My Bloody Valentine tune left overnight in a glass of lemonade until all the effects and layers are eroded away to reveal a woozily beautiful love song. "Hello I'll be your sinking ship," purrs Juanita, "Just take my hand, let's fall right in". You have to admit, it's a lush way to go.

Emily Mackay

reviewed on 12 May 2006







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