The Worry
Seekae’s long-awaited third album – and first with vocals – could have gone a lot of different ways, writes LACHLAN KANONIUK. Its most potent virtue turns out to be the ability to surprise.
The impact of 2011?s +DOME, the second LP from Sydney electronic trio Seekae, was far from immediate but far from insignificant. To use gaudy industry parlance: it had legs. The album, though immaculate, didn’t propel Seekae to the heights of huge-font billing on the festival circuit, yet still managed to sustain significant touring excursions over the past three years, selling out sizable venues many times over – all from an indiscernible groundswell following, not exactly feted by high radio rotation or buzz-instigating international press.
The space between mainstream and underground is a conducive flux for Seekae. It’s tempting to hypothesise what would have transpired had +Dome arrived some year and a half later around the crest of what’s since been labelled, disingenuously, ?the Australian sound,? amongst that season’s crop of breakthrough acts.
While +Dome bore pulsating sonic touchstones, similar to that of Flume’s succeeding ascendance (his appeal lying heavily on festival-ready bangers, territory not exactly explored by Seekae at that juncture), the initial tease of the trio’s third LP, revealed at an Vivid LIVE Opera House performance in mid-2012, was more akin to the radio-friendly electronica of Flume-mate Chet Faker. The shift, of course, was due to the addition of vocals, primarily from percussionist Alex Cameron. After two almost exclusively instrumental LPs, the trio revealed an ace in the hole. Cameron can sing, surprisingly well, in an emotive croon complementing the established knack for emotive electronic tone.
?That’s not to say this is a safe record. Far from it.?
The first vocal-led Seekae track, ?Yech?, was more experimentation than indication. Tellingly, it was never worked into a proper studio release, confined to the live setting during Seekae’s sparsest touring period. The track wasn’t as forward-thinking as we’d come to expect from Seekae, neither dismissing nor confirming a directive to become more accessible-as-pejorative.
The first single from The Worry, ?Another?, provided heartening assurance. It was released in September last year along with the announcement that the album would be released through Future Classic – the imprint that fostered Flume’s breakthrough. Rich in measured texture, ?Another? signalled considerable growth in production: booming percussion rationed in the chorus, EDM synth melodies fading and floating with an air of unease, a lush string arrangement pervading the coda. Cameron’s vocal pushes into fragility by skirting a higher register, crafting endearing melancholy on the vocal hook, ?I want another girl/I thought that you should know.? Outright lyrical cohesion evades ?Another?, but choice fragments shine through: ?Run instead of walk/Speak with your fingertips.?
The first voice we hear on The Worry doesn’t belong to Cameron, or anyone in the band for that matter. ?Back Out? opens with lecherous street banter between two Britons, barely discernable behind ambient noise. ?Girls go really wild if you don’t wanna fuck them, it’s funny?: it’s underhanded perversion, apparent if you pay attention, a strain of which may or may not have been hidden in plain sight on Seekae’s previous album.
Found-sound sample of distasteful masculinity withstanding, ?Back Out? is still a curious opening track, defined by swirling, gnarled instrumentation more in line with Seekae’s debut The Sound of Trees Falling on People, a warped throwback to the band’s primordial chiptune years (?Seekae? is a phonetic abbreviation of original moniker Commander Keen). The curveball of ?Back Out? mitigates any expectations for tremendous stylistic leap, while the remainder of the album is replete with Cameron’s crooned vocal, never detracting from what stands as a refinement of Seekae’s strengths, exploring polished arrangements with the benefit of lengthy tether attached to their established tonal foundations.
That’s not to say The Worry is a safe record. Far from it.
The ability to surprise. That’s the most potent virtue for an album, especially in 2014. Upon first listen, the opening half of The Worry* is a lot of things, a lot of *good things, all for the makings of what could be a solid, slightly dynamic, six-track EP. A satisfying side A, often brilliant – loaded with lead singles ?Another? and ?Test & Recognise? – but it’s what we’d expect, or at least hope, from a Seekae record three years in gestation. Come track six, ?Further?, a switch is flipped. Surprise.
?There’s little else in 2014 that sounds quite like it.?
?Further? is a strange, beautiful beast. Jaunty percussion bubbles underneath an arsenal of smooth-jazz wind, a wash of platitude couplets lyrically that still manage to resonate. There’s nothing else on The Worry that sounds quite like it. Hell, there’s little else in 2014 that sounds quite like it. It provides a moment of levity, only to launch into ?Oxen Calm?, the album’s hardest outing with its marksmanship with machine-gun percussive triplets, a tamed iteration of the artillery you would expect from the Night Slugs stable. The BPM hints at UK garage on ?The Stars Below?, stoking a slow-burn groove, a damp sneer from Cameron offering ?My woman told me all about your weakness/Do you even know what real men do??
That notion of ?real men? is a faint motif throughout The Worry. Those blokes bantering on ?Back Out?, are they ?real men?? The protagonist of ?Boys? loosely grapples with inadequacy: ?Let your brothers come and take me out/They said I was never from their breeding ground.? The cry of ?I’ve got these boys coming at me now? isn’t as explicit as Kirin J Callinan’s ?Embracism? in its allusion to male rite of passage. There’s little on The Worry that isn’t distant and introspective, these impotent questions of masculinity in modernity are turned on the self, not society.
Three albums in, Seekae are an act largely without peer. There are obvious parallels to compatriot trio PVT, with a de facto UK base and introduction of vocals, but Seekae seems to be aligned on a more stable trajectory. The Worry* could have gone a lot of different ways. Its title track threatens to explode into a house jam, choosing instead to abstain from cheap four-on-the-floor dancefloor/festival bait in a time where Disclosure are one of the most marketable bands on the planet. There are no bangers in line with newfound labelmate Flume. Hell, Flume’s rework of ?Test & Recognise? is his least dancefloor-ready credit yet. While the reference points to IDM remain on *The Worry, the abstract experimentalism is hand-selected from the underground, rather than entrenched within.
The Worry* is an album existing in its own space, bound by its own resolve. Most preconceived notions of success are mere fallacies in 2014. Just as we received first signs of *The Worry in 2013, Alex Cameron began a conceptual solo project. Alex Cameron solo was divorced from Alex Cameron of Seekae. Alex Cameron solo is a caricature of a washed-up showbiz hack, disillusioned with the rusted mechanisms of his industry. He’s a manifestation of the logical conclusion for the overwhelming majority of careerist musicians, conflicting songs about how younger acts ?Need to wait your turn/Wait your turn like me? with his gritty documentary on the despair and futility of the world’s most vaunted musical platform for rising acts.
The Worry* will more than likely endure in the same manner as *+Dome. Sell-out shows at home. A morsel of overseas exposure. A handful of festival appearances. Legs.
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