- It’s not often you get to compare Melbourne’s earnest, feminist rockers Camp Cope with 70’s glam legends KISS, but reminiscent of the time all four KISS members released solo albums on the same day, Georgia Maq is the second Camp Cope member to do her own release in the last two months. Her debut solo full-length is called Pleaser.
Some of us will recall there have been previous solo releases, though debut EP With A Q from 2014 is these days deleted from any official availability. That release, with songs about Footscray Station and going to a marriage equality rally, was a classic slice of suburban teenage folk punk minutiae. Five years later and two albums deep in a world-conquering rock band, I think it’s safe to assume Pleaser will be something different.
Opening track Away From Love starts out sounding familiar with some slow sad acoustic guitar chords, but a hip-hop beat slowly creeps in to reveal the sonic theme of the album – electro-pop songs with quiet verses and epic dancefloor-friendly choruses.
It’s certainly a new sound for Georgia Maq, but you wouldn’t call it radical experimentation. These songs sound pretty similar to a lot of the electro-pop songs you would find alongside Camp Cope on triple j playlist. Georgia’s voice is strong enough to pull off the dancefloor anthems, even though it’s a different kind of letting loose vocally than fronting a pop-punk band.
Comparisons with her other band will be inevitable. I think it will be familiar enough to please fans, but there are noticeable differences – one of which is the lyrical content, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons for Camp Cope’s appeal.
I think this is where Pleaser becomes a bit harder to get into if you're a fan of Camp Cope. The title track mines familiar territory in its exploration of relationship anxieties, but its chorus of “I am doomed to be in love with you” isn’t quite the kind of nuanced analysis we have grown accustomed to. The chorus of every song really is a repeated cliched line about love. In a way that KISS comparison might stretch further than I ever could have predicted.
Georgia Maq deserves credit for branching out beyond the familiar, and she does it well. It’s a good album and I think it’s likely to be very popular as it can match Camp Cope’s fanbase with a new dancefloor audience. And of course there’s no rule that says every song you write has to have layers of lyrical meaning to unravel.
But listening to it I feel like there is a missed opportunity. While there’s no doubt guitar rock is traditionally more linked to intelligent lyrical content than dance-pop, surely it doesn’t have to be that way. But if we are hoping for a record that can mix the dance club with the poetry club, sadly I’m not sure this is it. Still, look out for this one on your festival dancefloors this Summer.
- Andy Paine.