Calling All Cars -Dancing With a Dead Man

Mon 8th Aug, 2011 in Music Reviews

Although productivity is an admirable trait in a musician, it has the potential to carry a certain stigma about it. Given the close proximity drawn between releases, it’s only natural to suspect a thin veneer across a rehashed batch of tunes that follow more or less the exact same formula as what worked for them previously. Thankfully, this is not the path chosen for Calling All Cars, who have already followed up 2010’s Hold, Hold, Fire with Dancing With a Dead Man, a meaty rock beast with all the confidence and hooks that made them appealing to begin with but with smart progressions of their sound.

With the benefit of hindsight, the band have been able to analyse their debut and see what worked in their favour and what didn’t. The former was a no-brainer – all the bait shops and boxers in the world couldn’t compare hooks with these guys, whether it’s the shout-along choruses or even a churning guitar line that both signals and defines a song. This is expanded on significantly with Dancing – nearly every track sports some kind of earworm that takes seconds to memorise and days on end to get out of your head.

They’ve also managed to evenly balance out both their pop and rock sides, concocting a sound that’s got enough polish to fill out larger venues but enough grit to keep them powering on in the sticky-floored pubs they’ve come up through. Lead single Reptile is a solid example of the band achieving said balance, switching between tom-heavy drum rolls and Trent Reznor-esque yelps in the verses and a pounding, four-on-the-floor chorus that gives the track that extra rush of adrenalin. Autobiotics and No Sleep also serve as highlights, particularly when it comes to frontman Hayden Ing’s raspy, vitriolic melodies that ooze a sweet-and-sour hybrid.

As well as making notable developments of the sound they’ve already established, Dancing also sees the band working their way into slower – and often considerably darker – territory. The title track emerges from droning ambience with a thick, rumbling bass line and an eerie refrain of “There’s a dead man in my room,” while Redline allows Ing’s gentle vocals waltzing with looping guitar to escalade into an explosive exercise in dynamics – all in roughly two-and-a-half minutes.

Perhaps the most interesting work within this down-tempo experiment, however, comes in the form of album closer Wait for War. A thudding kick-drum beat drives through the song’s electronic undercurrent and a wall of guitar feedback, shrouding layers of ominous sounds and understated, distortion-washed vocals. It’s an enthralling audio experience, especially remarkable given that it is also the longest song on the entire record. It sounds nothing like anything the band have attempted previously, and it’s for this reason it stands as one of their finest creations.

While their brash-and-brazen take on the “Aussie rock” module potentially deterred some at first, Dancing With a Dead Man proves that there is more to this band than big riffs and a catchy chorus here and there. It’s a solid, generally consistent record, but it also serves as a demonstration of their abilities when they put their mind to creating new material that doesn’t mirror their prior work. This is easily the band’s best work to date, but the best part is that we can more than likely expect something even greater in 2012. Their effort here shall hopefully not go unrewarded.