Dream Team
The fourth album from Brisbane trio The Grates is all too casual and catchy, sounding channelled straight from the subconscious, writes JODY MACGREGOR.
The Grates of 2014 aren’t The Grates you know and love/hate from 10 years ago. For starters, drummer Alana Skyring left to become a baker and was replaced, with current drummer Ritchie Daniell apparently a permanent fixture now. But singer Patience Hodgson and guitarist John Patterson aren’t the same people either. Most dramatically, they’re expecting a baby together, and when Hodgson first announced they were working on a new album during an interview on triple j earlier this year, she joked, ?Gotta get out this album before the baby!? In addition, all three members of the group have a separate and very grown-up collaboration, running a caf?/bar together in Brisbane.
It’s tempting to see Dream Team through those goggles, pulling it apart for signs of adulthood being tackled musically as well as personally. I could write that review pretty easily, but I think it would do The Grates a disservice, not just because it’s lazy, but because it’s underselling their past work. They may be a bratty garage-rock band – the kind who get called ?pop punk? because you can see an argument for both those words, even though putting them together creates something grossly misrepresentative – but they’ve had plenty of songs about adult themes before. If ?Change? from their previous album Secret Rituals had been saved for Dream Team, then its lament about not wanting to be stuck in a rut while also not wanting to ch-ch-change would be easy to psychoanalyse for relevance. Likewise with ?Milk Eyes? from Teeth Lost, Hearts Won, a song about feeling clucky with the unforgettable lyric ?Why don’t we go and get some milkshake from boobs??
?Her voice feels like a lonelier instrument.?
In Dream Team?s opening song ?Call Me?, Hodgson sings, ?I still feel the same way I always have.? What has changed is her voice, which is getting more Chrissy Amphlett with each album, a development I am entirely in favour of – especially when she goes low and husky in ?Holiday Home?, singing ?Do you want to spend the night in this holiday home?? like a mirror-reality version of Ciara’s ?Body Party?. Her voice feels like a lonelier instrument on Dream Team than it has in the past, with less of the harmonies and shout-along backing vocals of their earlier albums. Her voice stands alone perfectly well, but when she’s hitting the high ?ooh wah hoo? bits there’s an emptiness around her I’ve got used to hearing filled, a negative space that wouldn’t be noteworthy if it wasn’t for the way their old albums sounded like a gang marking out their territory.
One song that breaks this mould and also leaves all their usual grunge/riot-grrrl signifiers behind to channel something older than the 1990s is ?Wild One?, which goes way back to garage rock’s roots with a wilfully simple guitar line joined by a macho solo. When the backing vocals kick in for the chorus I can see the long hair and flared jeans of an Old Grey Whistle Test live performance. ?What’s Wrong With You? goes back even further, sounding like a solo cut from the breakout member of a girl group produced by Phil Spector, complete with echoing production and Hodgson singing a falsetto ?You don’t gotta treat me right? followed by a knowing, lower-pitched ?No, you don’t.? It’s lovely.
?It’s not rushed but it’s casual, minimal because that’s the way it has to be.?
At the other end of some kind of spectrum are songs that are done in under two minutes, punkish rage blasts. ?Friends With Scum? is pushed along by tightly locked drums and bass while a squealing brake-line guitar tries to hold them back, but all is futile and this train is going to Angrytown. Meanwhile, ?I Wish I Was Alone? is a lover’s tiff so brutal I can only imagine Daniell staring at the cymbals awkwardly while he plays. A dinner bell rings as if to announce each round of stinging lyrics: ?When you’re always stoned I wish I was alone/When you use that voice I wish I was alone.? One of the only other songs with backing vocals, Patterson joins in to add harsh emphasis to lines presumably directed at him.
So maybe that one song is the kind of thing you wouldn’t imagine from the version of The Grates who wrote ?Trampoline?, but the main influence their current circumstances seem to have had on Dream Team is in forcing them to be succinct. They spat these songs out in a six-day recording session (produced by Owen Penglis from Straight Arrows, done minus their old label Dew Process). It feels channelled straight from the subconscious, especially the excellent ?7-Eleven?. While it meanders along, shakers appearing and disappearing out of nowhere, Hodgson compares herself to various convenience stores in a way that feels very Queensland even before she gets to ?I light up like a Night Owl in Brisbane.? It’s not rushed but it’s casual, minimal because that’s the way it has to be, and comfortable with its limitations.
+