The Fauves - NervousFlashlights

Mon 24th Jul, 2006 in Music Reviews

Australian rock veterans The Fauves have released a new album, Nervous Flashlights. It coincides with the band’s 18th birthday, and they now have 200 recorded songs under their belt. This is despite a sales history that should have denied all hope of ever again securing a commercial release. Nevertheless, album number eight has been launched.

There is nothing particularly memorable about Nervous Flashlights. Musically the tracks are formulaic and generally uninspiring, but lyrically they are witty and literate. The problem is the guys are attempting to tread that very fine line between self-effacing tripe and culturally critical self-indulgence. In doing so they unfortunately fall into a well of gimmicky mediocrity. It is hard to take them seriously or even positively engage with the tongue-in-cheek humour they want to convey. The lyrical content is largely egocentric, leaving us almost no point of reference with which to relate to the songs. There is little universality – the words often seem to have been spawned from blandly concrete trivialities. ‘We Sleep in the Afternoon’ extols the virtues of the Spanish siesta and ‘The Lost Art of Shorthand’ is about just that.

Some have speculated that the album represents the sexual awakening of singer-guitarist Andrew Cox, once the rock world’s most famous virgin. ‘Australian Gigolo’ has him studying ‘The Joy of Sex’ and lamenting how lovemaking is back-breaking work. ‘True Love Waits’ was inspired by the abstinence movement in America and is a humourous examination of those who are celibate prior to marriage. ‘I’ll Work When I’m Dead’, apparently a message to John Howard, is a poignant comment on the state of Australian society currently. It is an ode to an alternative way of life. These tracks are dull diamonds in the rough because they come closer to striking the much-needed balance between offshoot whimsy and credibility. Nervous Flashlights is slightly mellower than The Fauves’ immediately preceding material, and is more reminiscent of 2002’s Footage Missing. It is satirical, light-hearted and innocuous, but I typically demand more from the music I listen to.