Every so often, something wafts my way, lands on my desk, and takes me completely by surprise. Such is the case with Brisbane's The Rational Academy and their debut CD A Heart Against Your Own, their eclectic mix of pop melodies, noise, and avant-pop sensibilities sweeping over me in a tsunami of warm fluffiness and bright sunshine. My natural constituency is normally nowhere near this kind of bright melodic pop-tunefulness, but it won me over with its naturally sunny disposition tempered with a bittersweetness and a noisiness that would, on paper at least, appear to be a recipe for disaster.
This album's ultimate success may have something to do with the involvement of Room40 label boss Lawrence English—certainly if his music and his label's back catalogue is anything to judge by, then his ear for crafting and finding finely-honed music almost ensures a winning formula. Here he takes on the dual roles of band member and producer; the resulting guitar-based music positively shimmers from the speakers, sparkling breakers lapping against rocks, the foam flinging itself joyfully into the air, catching the sun's rays, and glinting against the azure. Set against that though is an artful self-indulgence, in lesser hands awkward and annoying but here invested with a pure joyfulness and engaging innocence, ably assisted by simple guitar lines and the combination of the singing of Benjamin Thompson and the 'butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth' sweetness of Meredith McHugh's voice. If nothing else it reminded me strongly of the '80s English band Altered Images in parts, with that same combination of an almost childish singing voice with bittersweet reflective lyricism, but instead infused with a sharper and more experimental aesthetic lacking from the antecedent outfit.
Take as a fine example "Jojoplanteen," the second track, which starts off plainly enough in introspective pop-guitar band territory and seeming to appear to plow a well-worn furrow, Thompson's voice harking back to a time of foolish youth and ignorance, and memories of youthful love, all backed by strummed and plucked guitars the likes of which have been heard countless times; the tone metamorphoses when the track explodes in a wall of noise and feedback at the end, a deliberate reflection of how time changes everything in the light of maturation and the gaining of wisdom, including views, ideas, and the very nature of memories themselves. It is well-judged though; it hasn't been introduced as an afterthought and it sits naturally and easily, a logical conclusion most definitely.
"2004" turns out to be my favorite song on here, stalking bass and gothic-tinged guitar hanging and levitating almost sinisterly in the background, while Thompson and McHugh's melodic and plaintive duet enumerates a series of reminiscences, a thick miasma of longing and regret that appears at odds with the brooding menace that just hangs around in the background yet manages simultaneously to be strongly underlined by it. It's almost like the Hansel and Gretel tale; a couple talking innocently about the untainted past while walking through a dark shadowed forest, the night-ghouls and terrors being held back by that very innocence yet somehow being underscored by a sense that all is not well even so.
"Squid and Whale" continues that tense standoff between the sweet and the sinister, a nine and a half minute epic dedicated to a strange beauty, and possessing the selfsame qualities itself. It twists and turns, veering from the pop-styled opening few minutes to a shiveringly dark ambient interlude that once more bursts out in technicolor in a gloriously cacophonous fuzz-out noise-fest, eventually calming down once more into familiar guitar territory. Just to keep things sweet, the album closer brings us a delightful glockenspiel and guitar love song that helps to bring things full-circle and to a satisfactory end.
I liked this, and it just goes to show how the mix of styles and experimental approach can be used to brilliant effect on something like 'pop' music, elevating out of the morass of pap that usually clogs that genre. It would be nice to think that one day all such music will be of this caliber, but for now we will have to be satisfied with these little diamonds.
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