- Like all international crises, the pandemic has been tempered with the small pleasures that ensue while people are forced into isolation. One of those pleasures is this COVID-era set of tunes from former Brisbane musician Owen Jolly who has called Wales home for the past twenty or so years.
For those who share my increasingly autumnal age, some may remember Owen as one of the singer/guitarists of ‘90s indie glam outfit Spacejunk and electro-punksters The Kryptics. Over in Wales, he has kept himself busy with instrumental surf rock combos and further band projects that deepen his musical vocabulary into locally-influenced language and inspiration.
Facing infection rates and self-isolation necessities that make Australia extremely lucky by comparison, Owen soon tired of the lack of opportunities for him and his band to come together. So, he plugged in an old laptop and recorded an album’s worth of new tunes under the name Fredi Blino, a Welsh-language pun on ‘wedi blino’ which translates as ‘tired’.
And while Fredi Blino may share our pandemic fatigue, he certainly doesn’t allow it to curb his own creativity. This collection of tunes, entitled The Dishwasher Tapes, is a hugely enjoyable collection of bedroom pop and experimental squiggles that frequently resembles Paul McCartney’s I, II and III trilogy of lo-fi, home-baked albums. He utilises his half-hour of music to make daring musical detours, but at the same time, it has that relaxed home-recording vibe that ensures the genre-leaping never gets heavy-handed.
Opening track Roken In De Kamer takes in Ffredi’s career-long love of wordplay, gulping a bunch of English, Welsh, French and Dutch words over a spiky slice of punky pop. Dwwwi (Tune IV) goes for a Welsh-language manifesto of sorts (“Fredi Blino – I am,” the translation reads at one point, “There are people on the bunkhouse dancing to my tunes”). This all transpires over a falsetto chorus and a woozy electro-funk groove. The album’s title is no doubt inspired by the track Dishwasher: Reloaded, a post-Matmos slice of musique concrete that takes the clatter of crockery and turns it into the rhythmic basis of the tune’s funky jam.
Ultimately, though, it’s Ffredi Blino’s way with a well thought-out pop song that impresses most. And The Dishwasher Tapes is peppered with them, such as the Spacejunk-vintage (Take Me Back To) Honolulu, a yearning for sun-dappled freedom that is even more relevant in this day and age. Similarly impressive is the T-Rex hysterics of (I Wanna Be A) Rock ‘n’ Roll Star and my personal favourite, the Pavement-flavoured slow stomp of Hey Dishcloth!. There’s even a fun little bash at stoner metal in closing track The Dungeon Of Nevermore.
So while we’re all feeling the effects of COVID-19 in different ways, The Dishwasher Tapes is one of the helpful little reminders that music always wins out in the end.
- Matt Thrower.