Opposites attract, don’t they. Which must be why, as summer heaves up the gas mark to hitherto unbearable heights, the band who slope into town in black t-shirts and leathers, cranking out dense psychedelic rock and gazing their boots a fresh sheen seem like such a very good idea indeed. Better even than iced tea and a White Magnum. Yes, that good. In reality of course they couldn’t ever have existed without triple figure temperatures, clearly being the result of either intoxication or heatstroke, and surely both. That’s the only way to create the wide-angle mental conditions and double-exposure bleed where some melodies can meet, interlace and meld, how such a hazy ambience can find its feet and build upwards. Which, considering the attire, possibly also says something about how double-hard they are too.
With their debut album Melbourne, Australia’s 5-piece none-more-black rockers The Morning After Girls have knocked up a selection box of the best rock ‘n’ roll sewn in such acrid soils over the past decade. There’s the trippy demeanour and rock-n-roll-is-owed-to-us attitude of Brain Jonestown Massacre, the more methodical build of The Warlocks, the intensity and rallying focus of BRMC, perhaps some Ride-esque momentum and, more so than any other likeness, the chunky, coursing sense of desire running riot through most of The Dandy Warhol’s back catalogue. You can throw around Velvet Underground and T-Rex comparisons too if you like, they’re all good and inserted impeccably.
‘Run For Our Lives’ could be straight off the Dandy’s ‘Come Down’ album, a driving combo of the Stones’ guitar and The Who’s gusto, smoked by Lou Reed at a party. ‘Hidden Spaces’ ditto, but slightly later period, like closing your eyes and drifting off in the desert wind. ‘Always Mine’ moves into Warlocks territory, with a never-too-distant sense of deep harmony, the gentle girl-boy ‘Lazy Greys’ is the Dandy Warhols covering The Velvet Underground in the 1950s and ‘Fireworks’ is a BRMC/Ride jam begging for the strobes to be turned up. There’s a levitating patch of ambient guitar noise (‘Fall Before Walking’), the common sort found at any good Spiritualized gig, but placing this a few tracks from the end rather than at the close aids the pace greatly. New ground is not covered, flags are not planted, let’s be clear. But if they lack their own identity, they’re not short of a radiating prowess you can veritably bask in.