Underlay
The new Twerps EP – their first release for Merge outside of Australia – doesn’t play like a mere stopgap. But it does feel like the final word on this era of the band, writes ANTHONY CAREW.
Given Underlay* was released to coincide with Twerps? surprise signing to mega-indie Merge Records – thereby cementing the Melburnian quartet’s upward mobility – you’d be forgiven for expecting a set bubbling with excitement, enthusiasm and a healthy dose of provin?-it. Instead, when frontman Marty Frawley admits, ?I don’t want to sing ?Dreamin?/It’s lost every single meaning,? near the end of standout closer ?Consecutive Seasons?, Twerps sound not like they’re on their way somewhere new, but coming back from it; *Underlay the work of a band who’s already done a lap around the hype-bubble block and returned feeling jaded.
The refrain on ?Consecutive Seasons? – ?I’m just so damn sick/I’m so sick of it all? – is quite the lament, even if Frawley delivers it with more of a sigh than a spit. As he does, the guitars still jangle, but with a slacker-rock indolence, as if just the very idea of nascent notoriety (and/or random celebrity endorsement) carries with it mental fatigue. The song begins innocuously – and comically – enough, with Frawley feeling out-of-place when far from home: ?Are you wise enough to become a star/Are you cool enough to be in this bar?? But when he namedrops his own song only to distance himself from it, an artist expressing both hostility and grieving for his own creation, that disenfranchisement grows real teeth.
?There’s little here that feels like filler.?
If that despair at the feeling of ?constantly trying to get even? implies the financial concerns of the self-employed, that thought sounds out loud on the Feelies-ish opener ?Heavy Hands?, where Frawley insistently hisses, ?Why don’t you give me/Give me what I worked for? over a twitchy rhythm, and guitarist Julia MacFarlane offers a one-word response to his call – ?Money? – that condenses the theme in a single world.
Songs about services rendered and owed debts are plenty familiar from hip-hop (my pick: Dizzee Rascal’s ?Brand New Day?), but rare in indie rock circles; even though this era of over-the-bar post-show paperwork makes the indie band, more than ever, an entity in which finances are ever-present. Hell, it’s called dolewave for a reason. And the verses of ?Heavy Hands? find Frawley sounding pleasingly mad; the indie musician’s not-in-for-the-cash humility still owns the refrain, as MacFarlane and not-related drummer Alex Macfarlane (also the EP’s producer, and one of the songwriters in The Stevens) join in wonky, philosophical harmony: ?This is not something that I want/This is just something that I need.?
These two related bookends give a thematic backbone to Underlay and make it play as something inspired, with a life beyond filling the gap between albums. Its title track may be two minutes of incidental instrumentalism, jangly guitars swapped out for shaky keyboards, but there’s little else here that feels like filler.
?It’s the sounds of the decks being cleared.?
The sprightly ?Conditional Report? is a sweet pop song 112 seconds long; MacFarlane offering a lead vocal whose Kiwi accent – especially as it rhymes ?this? with ?kiss? – makes Twerps? spiritual connection to Flying Nun sound plenty tangible. ?California Clay? also doesn’t crack two minutes, but when it ends, it verily expires; sunkissed and fatigued, a summer-memories snapshot equal parts hazy and lazy. ?Wait Til You Smile? is a devotional writ in scratchy guitar jangle, a double-time romantic successor to ?Peculiar?; and ?Hypocrite? is the album’s fuzziest, gnarliest cut, which starts out staking out a corner of the garage before stretching outwards into something psychedelic.
These songs have, clearly, not been released on an EP because of a lack of quality. It’s the sounds of the decks being cleared, with Twerps harbouring escalating expectations for their second LP now that they’re rubbing shoulders with Arcade Fire, Neutral Milk Hotel, M Ward, et al. Underlay shows why they’ve become so beloved at home, stays true to the band’s beginnings and hands over a bunch more memorable tunes. But it feels like the final word in this Twerps era – a world of bigger budgets, stages and laments awaiting.
+