It’s been a long time between drinks for Perth retro-pop band The Stems. To throw around the usual ‘difficult second album’ rhetoric would be a gross understatement. But more than 20 years on from what looked like being their sole LP release, The Stems have finally delivered Heads Up, the follow-up record.
So, with all the developments in music that have taken place since At First Sight, Violets Are Blue came out, why should we still care about The Stems? Simple. Just like At First Sight, Heads Up delivers an uncanny slice of retro-pop and psychedelia that sets the band aside from everything else going on in Australian music.
It’s not completely evident on opening track Leave You Way Behind, which is a relatively generic number that chugs through the first four minutes of the record, but once you reach the tag-team vocals of the chorus on the pacey She Sees Everything, you have an idea of what you’re in for.
Surround Me features smoother, cleaner guitars than the album’s opening bracket but it’s the sweet tow and three-part harmonies of What’s Your Stand? and Undying Love that define Heads Up. There’s the obligatory guitar noodling in the closing moments of the former, while the latter builds for a minute before delivering the most distinct riff on the record. But however clever the instrumentation, it never pushes harmony and melody far out of the spotlight.
There is the occasional less-than-impressive moment on Heads Up, and it always comes when the band tries to haul their sound forward to the present day. Liar is generic indie-rock superimposed cheaply over an equally generic blues progression, while the psychedelic moments on Get to Know Me are interrupted by a dreary and repetitive vocal ‘hook’.
But those moments are fairly sparse over the album’s 10 tracks and 40 minutes. There’s the acoustic lead-in to Only if You Want it ’s irresestible melody and the closing minutes of the record are up there with the best, as the lush vocal harmonies tie in with some ridiculously excessive guitar wankery.
