Sugar Army - TheParallels AmongstOurselves

Tue 28th Jul, 2009 in Music Reviews

As evidenced by the excellent documentary of earlier this year, Something In The Water, there is a plethora of very popular (and often rather excellent) musical acts coming out of Perth in Western Australia. Not only are there the established bands (Eskimo Joe, Gyroscope, Karnivool et al), but a selection of up-and-comers hoping to one day be mentioned in the same breath as the bands previously listed.

It’s obvious that Sugar Army are quite keen to get to this stage. They’ve worked tirelessly over the past couple of years with tours on the other side of the country and delivered an EP Where Do You Hide Your Toys? that showed promise for the future. Said future has materialised in the form of their long-awaited debut album, The Parallels Amongst Ourselves. Whilst there’s still a selection of excellent tunes on offer here, the quartet struggle significantly to capture the listener’s attention for the record’s entirety. They get caught up in what can ultimately be described as attempting to do too much with too little to back it all up.

The main fault in Parallels as an album is how much time is spent on exploring and experimenting with the band’s sound. Granted, it’s a debut album, and such a trait is defensible. However, it really wouldn’t be such an issue if it wasn’t established so early on exactly what works. The music of Sugar Army, quite obviously to even a passing listener, works best when the quartet is able to amalgamate brooding overtones with alt-rock accessibility.

With fast-paced, intricate rhythms, guitar that threatens to leap out of the speakers and a rollicking vocal line from distinctive frontman Patrick McLaughlin that keeps it together, single Tongue in Cheeks wraps everything that Sugar Army do well into a punchy three-and-a-half-minute radio-ready tune. Another solid example is Acute. Whilst slightly more down-tempo, the song still packs in a hyperactive fuzz riff during its verses and culminates in an incessantly catchy hook.

So where does Parallels lose its way? It’s hard to specify it down to one stage of the record, but if pressed you’d have to blame the album’s second half on what could have been a very solid Australian release. Despite its clever title, Maybe the Boy Who Cried Wolf Was Just Paranoid is uninspired and meandering in its droning guitar and its pseudo-tribal percussion. Meanwhile, attempts at picking up the pace once more ( You Are a Possession, Up for Sale ) are stunted and muffled by filler like Building Castles and the overlong That’s A Damn Fine Cliché (strike two on the song-name-better-than-actual-song situation).

Guitarist Todd Honey makes a lot of noise with his instrument, but only sporadically is it anything of substance – the noise and distortion shoots for pretentious shoegaze but mostly comes off as plain annoying. What a shame far more attention is given to this element of the band’s music as opposed to percussive powerhouse James Sher, who is audibly raring to send every track into a frenzy but ends up having his fills choked and condensed in the process.

There’s enough substance in The Parallels Amongst Ourselves to warrant interest from older fans and people who have just started paying attention. However, the album overall doesn’t elicit the “next big thing” responses that its highlights promise.

The Parallels Amongst Ourselves is out now through Shock Records.