Dumb Things: Time Again | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- I think I’ve got to redefine what ‘quintessential Australiana’ means to me. I have an inkling there’s another history of Australia where the soundtrack isn’t Barnsey, Farnsey and LRB, but something shyer, subtler, more unassuming. It probably begins with The Go-Betweens (maybe because that’s when we ‘borrowed’ the sound off Flying Nun? Perhaps it was Aotearo-ana up till then?) and then, yep, Dick Diver, Twerps. It was slightly disheartening to hear Dumb Things refer to that second wave of Australian jangle-pop as ‘their forbears’, like I’d aged twenty years and only just noticed. Whatever. After the surge of off-key, off-kilter bands that bloated community-airwaves with ‘dolewave’ to the point of busting, a few years back, a band like Dumb Things feels like a pleasant position correction, a breath of fresh air. That’d be a good way of describing their 2017, self-titled, debut full-length. Also, if that’s the case, it makes 2019’s Time Again, even fresher. Like the kind of oxygen you’ve got to go on a road trip for, because you can’t get it in an Australian capital city any more.

That’s appropriate because, for all that Dumb Things are always described as a pop band, I get strong country feels from their music. It’s evocative of the sort of thing that co-vocalist Adam Vincent grew up with in Mackay. I can easily imagine many of the songs here strummed on an acoustic guitar, from the back of a ute, cruising along past endless canefields. Perhaps it's that lurking Paul Kelly influence that the Dumb Thing's name suggests.

Another one of the bands strengths is the breadth of their musical foundations. When I said there’s more than just pop, there’s a lot more. Adam’s vocals always give me a ‘90s indie feel, like I was listening to the quieter moments of Lou Barlow or the mournful twang of Buffalo Tom. In the end, however, I guess it’s really right that the pop qualities of this thing are the ones people remember the most. The country is tinged by sadness, the indie is etched with melancholy and the jangle -like jangle always has been- is one step away from emptying the goon bag, collapsing and expiring under the Hills Hoist. The pop not only unites all the other things that Dumb Things do but it lifts them up. Try out Crash Barrier with Madeleine Keinonen’s vocals leading the layered harmony and the guitar chiming somewhere off in the heavens. You’re left feeling light and happy. It’s almost inexplicable,  like you don’t deserve it, but it’s something that just can’t be denied.

Second albums are supposed to be difficult, right? Not for Dumb Things. As they’ve said themselves, they set out to be tighter, more concise than on their debut. It seems like the kind of aspiration that is almost inappropriate for a jangle-pop band. Yet that’s what they’ve done. For all that they’re fixated on the slow passage of time through the humid miasma that covers Queensland, they refuse to be exhausted by it. They might as well drink from a bottle of the most upbeat qualities of The Go-Betweens and it makes Time Again sparkle with an unexpected energy. These days there’s a lot about Australia that fills me with uncertainty and anxiety. So, in a way that I didn’t expect I’d be able to say, I’m very pleased to have a quintessential Australiana that I can get behind.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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