Still Smoking

Easy / House Music
Mum Smokes
Sensory Projects, 2009
4.5 stars

Wow. Though prolific in their various solo guises, not a lot has been seen/heard of these guys together in the last few years. Clearly, they've been busy - this double-album set (as opposed to a double-disc album, ala Deerhunter's Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.) was recorded between 2006 and last year, though how or why they've held onto it until now is beyond me, as either album could easily have been released in its own right to guaranteed critical aclaim. Easy starts offf with material from '06 and '07, predominantly a mix of lazy, poppy, acoustic folk with a few ambient instrumentals thrown in for good measure. Standout At The Gate is a front-runner for song of the year, with Karl Scullin's great basslines right up front in the mix, Them Days is a downbeat melancholy gem, and the laid-back epic Easy that closes out the disc is a ripper too. Vocal duties are shared throughout by Karl (better known as Kes) and Julian Patterson, though the latter has more success nailing the slack-but-still-in-tune thing. The second disc (depending on which way you hold the cleverly-designed album cover), House Music, is a more upbeat, rocking affair, with freak-folk and '60s rock sneaking its way into the mix. Once again, the album's first single is its standout track - Left For Dead is awkward at first, but once the haunted strings give way to the bouncy chorus it's absolutely riveting. Elsewhere the pace slows down - such as on the spacey Health and Girls, and title track House Music, a loose synth-flecked instrumental, heavily reminiscent of member Patterson's Minimum Chips project - but never does either disc lose its hold on the listener. Both seperate and as a whole, Easy and House Music are wonderful examples of late-noughties Australian folk-pop.

Artwork: A
Designwise, beautifully understated. Two albums built into one clean, elegant cardboard wallet. The artwork itself (as well as the band's first video clip, for At The Gate), comes courtesy of Mark Rodda, who was also responsible for the wonderful illustration that that addorned their previous album, 2005's Rainbows, Chasms and Fantasies (which will itself have a timely re-release later this year).