The Goon Sax: Mirror II | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- There’s something singular about the melodic, disaffected musical output of youngsters on the outskirts of suburban Brisbane, maybe most notably chronicled in Andrew Stafford’s beloved Pig City. The Saints lived together and recorded in their Petrie Terrace sharehouse. Kiddie-punkers Clag had Red Hill’s ‘Scum Manor’, the title of one of the tracks on their 2012 LP Pasted Youth. And The Goon Sax, after releasing two LPs - Up to Anything (while they were still in high school), then We’re Not Talking - and touring extensively overseas, settled into Paddington’s ‘Fantasy Planet’, to write Mirror II.

Though there’s no record of the existence of a ‘Mirror I’, this release, the first after the trio’s overseas signing to Matador Records (Interpol, King Krule, Snail Mail), does feel like it marks a new chapter for them. Recorded in Bristol by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, and produced by the legendary John Parish (Aldous Harding, PJ Harvey, Dry Cleaning), the sharpened production is the most significant development for the group since the addition of Riley Jones’ songwriting and lead vocals in We’re Not Talking. And while they maintain the candour and the sense of dialogue that has always existed at the bones of their writing, the slanting presence of the surreal gives the ten tracks new dimension.

Lead single In the Stone has the largest, poppiest treatment of a Goon Sax track yet, but its storytelling is curiously oblique. Louis Forster sings about a time of flux he experienced living in Germany with an old partner: “Through the frozen window, I see a dark shape on the street / Are you the vampire? I feel a dark heart on the street?” The supernatural imagery is cut by reality knocking, as Jones’ airy voice joins him in the chorus: “Didn’t have to sound so disappointed when I called / If you had ever saved my number in your phone.”

Next is the smoky, glammed-up Psychic, where synths flash like spotlights behind Forster’s baritone. There’s more of that on Tag, which opens with a cymbal chiming out over a bassline like a ritual bell toll. A garbled sample sucks us into a dreamy, synth-laden landscape, where Jones lays out a tale of missed connections, trading cards with a demon, never-ending rain.

James Harrison’s vocals first appear on Temples. His writing, which we hear again on Carpetry and on Caterpillars, is more scattered than his counterparts, and his voice spikes all over the place with what sometimes seems like joy and sometimes like anxiety. Amid the charming chaos, are a handful of dead convincing lines - there’s hardly anything sweeter than his warbled delivery of the lyric: “I’m dreaming in your gaze”. Harrison is probably the closest link between the Goon Sax and an outfit like Clag, and his tracks on the record prove just how much the group benefit from the far-reaching influences of its respective members - echoes of The Pastels, The Stooges, Japans’ Fushitsusha are all layered to create a shared language between the triad.

The Kylie Minogue-meets-Cocteau Twins cut Desire sees Jones ask to see the ‘mirror of [her] dreams’. In a press statement from the band, she says that she’s interested in the idea of desire being caused by a lack, “a gap that we are always trying to fill, even while it constantly evades us”. There’s certainly more than a thread of this gap running through Mirror II. The Goon Sax are at their strongest when they’re in dialogue with one another, trying to bridge two perspectives or reconcile the holes in a story. Intentions aren’t always consistent with how things are received - the mirror’s reflection betrays its subject, or portends a darker subconscious. But the spots where truth is hazy can be filled with dreams from past and future, and these songs offer an entry point for peering a little closer.

- Aleisha McLaren.
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