Bad Vision

Bad Vision’s first album doesn’t overcomplicate things: each of the 14 songs are three minutes or shorter, with a ?70s-centric balance between power-pop and proto-punk that’s big on snide vocals and needling guitar lines. They’re prickly rockers with easy choruses, and they play like a showreel for the live show.

With that many songs that short, it’s important to mix things up. At first brush it doesn’t seem like the Melbourne quartet have done that enough – and maybe they haven’t – but Bad Vision feels more convincing and diverse with time. It’s a grower not in that it’s subtle, but in that there’s an unexpected sturdiness beneath the bratty singalong surface. Of course, it helps that it nails a trashy vintage sound, thanks to engineer Brooke Penrose (Saint Jude) and mixing and mastering by Mikey Young. There’s no bassist, but the band use an equaliser to add some low-end muscle to the guitar on songs like ?Hurricane?, which uses a standout run of perky pseudo-bass to cement its junkyard catchiness.

The album is more retro overall than predicted by the straighter garage-punk of last January’s double A-side 7?, both sides of which are included here in re-recorded form. Hats are tipped to The Cramps (?Flesh Blood & Bones? especially) and The Stooges, while ?Worlds Collide? shares a lot of CBGB’s-minted influences with the first Strokes album. (It also shows a brief softer side in the bridge.) Between Jerome Rush’s frayed vocals and a post-punk stiffness, the divergent ?Photocopy? even recalls early Wire. Those various reference points are united by all the crammed-in melodies and Rush’s bubblegum-gone-to-seed delivery.

Some songs feel underdeveloped, like ?Blind Eyes?, while others simply feel rushed. But that rushed feeling is one of Bad Vision’s strengths too, from the amphetamine motoring of ?I Got a Problem? to the reckless momentum of opener ?Dirty Blood? (sample lyric: ?You’re like wine, baby, but you don’t get better with age?). Likewise, for all the well-worn familiarity of these songs, the two guitars bubble away with an infectious nervous energy that wins the day. Case in point: the serrated hook in ?Visions? and the tangled leads of the closing ?Fishbowl?.

Let’s hope the next record increases the band’s distinctiveness and attention span. But let’s also hope it keeps this one’s relentless, hopped-up charisma.

Self Titled Album (12" Vinyl, Cassette & Digital) by Bad Vision