Goons of Doom - The Storyof Dead Barbie and theGhost

Wed 13th Sep, 2006 in Music Reviews

In spite of their fondness for graveyard imagery like zombies and ghosts, Australian kook spooks Goons of Doom are about as scary as the Count from Sesame Street. Instead, their album The Story of Dead Barbie and the Ghost channels a cartoonish style of horror into rough-cut fifties-style surf tunes, producing a sound akin to a collision between the Beach Boys, the Dead Kennedys and an episode of Scooby Doo.

Bizarre though this might sound, Goons of Doom make this strange hybrid of styles and mindsets work, bringing it all together with a startling lack of pretension and undeniable sense of chaotic joy.

Precision is clearly not a key idea in the recording process for Goons of Doom, with an idle, jam-band feel to the album that hints at an anarchic, stream-of-consciousness live band.

Everything on the record seems to be straining for the discordant feel of older Against Me! albums, with the guitars loosely strumming chords that would individually bring to mind sunny California of the 1950s, but together delicately mangle the sound to create a disconcerting mirror version. Guitar tones shift with the tracks, increasing the baffling palette of noises and sounds. Jangly and clean summertime riffs (‘Broken Toe’) segue into grating power chord riffs that drone and groan beneath sharp-edged vocals (‘My Car’) before switching styles again to a twanging, country-fried piece (‘Leaving Song’).

Sharing the vocal duties amongst the band members also produces a strange array of sounds, from droning American-accented male vocals to the European feel of Bang Bang Bunny Fang, a Czech woman who delivers whispered sex appeal and raw-throated screeching with equal ease. As though this weren’t enough, don’t forget the demented percussion that can both dominate and meditate.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, songs come together, almost as if by pleasant accident. Though the initial aesthetic of the album might suggest the producer fell asleep at a mixing desk, The Story of Dead Barbie and the Ghost has a subtly persuasive sensibility that gradually begins to take hold. Like punk band Against Me!, Goons of Doom take some getting used to, but after a while, it all starts to make sense, and the fine balances of the album begin to come clear.

Unlike so many others, Goons of Doom have made an album that is challenging and unusual without resorting to pretentious arrangements to offer the illusion of content. Instead, their marvellous imprecision and a disarming sense of humour creates an atmosphere where the only things that matter are the music and the abandon that comes with it.