Nonchalant. That’s the word that describes the second album by Geelong’s Frowning Clouds to a tee. You don’t hear it used much these days – and you don’t hear music like The Frowning Clouds much either.
If you’re going to pigeon-hole The Frowning Clouds, just where do they sit? Me, I avoid reading other peoples’ reviews before penning my own in the same way that Morticia used to avoid sunlight on The Addams Family. I stumbled across an online write-up of “Whereabouts” the other day (that’s where I stole “nonchalant”) where the writer used the term “dolewave” to describe the music. What the fuck? Besides the fact that the “rock and roll” hasn’t been called that for years and is harder to get than a cheap seat on a Qantas, tying any descriptor to “wave” is just plain lazy.
“Dolewave” translates to “slacker” - if you’re old enough to actually remember the ‘90s and weren’t just born at the start of them. “Slacker” used to apply to bands whose singers had OCD and whose music dragged as if the members had pulled two cones of head too many and were in need of munchies and a good lie down.
The Frowning Clouds don’t sound like that in the slightest. My jaundiced ears (still) have them sitting, and practising, in Geelong garages where a beaten-up stereo pumps out scratched LPs they found in their parents’ collections of re-issue labels with names like “Boulders” and “Rubble.” Copyists, however, they are not.
The songs on “Whereabouts” also don’t sound like they were written and played by a band that didn’t care. They are recorded with lots of reverb and no concessions whatsoever to commercial (Triple Jay) radio airplay. They’re simple, unaffected and good, wrapped up in a trademark sound that makes them out of kilter with everything else going on.
“Whereabouts” doesn’t really kick into gear until a few songs in when “Propellers” takes off. A taught feel and a chorus that embeds itself in the back of your brain kicks the album up a level. “3 O’clock Habit”, the song that follows, is positively wistful in its contrast. “Heaps Deep”, on the other hand, is propelled by a burbling Motown bass-line and a great sing-song melody line. These three songs are the beating heart of the album.
“Listen Closelier” (the debut) was a cleaner sounding record where “Whereabouts” is fuzzier and darker around the edges. It doesn’t so much go out of its way to take more chances as go a few different places, organically. The zig-zagging “Human Being. Human Doing, Human Going” (these boys love their lyrical non sequiturs) is a case in point where the time change is rung hard.
The closing “Product Of The Peanut Butter Company” is where the studio experimentations only hinted at earlier (and on a bonus disc - more on that soon) take off. Possibly it’s a hint of things to come. It wouldn’t be out of place on a compilation of great, lost UK freakbeat songs.
My copy came with a second disc, “Gospel Sounds From The Church of Scientology” that was originally a European tour cassette only release. It’s a 10-track collection of mostly beat songs with the reverb turned down and it’s killer.
