Songs are walking the hard path back to modernism with a shrug. The Sydney based band make echo heavy drone pop that gives modern music the cold shoulder. Squeezing into the gap between pop, minimalism and no wave, the sound of Songs is deceptively simple, friendly and willfully careless. They simulate the best of the 'New' music: New York during the 70's and New Zealand in the 80's.
Echoing the repetition and minimalism of John Cale and La Monte Young, the guitar work shimmers and sprawls into long summer drones. With the same attention to simplicity that inspired The Clean, the rhythms are stark and mechanical. Lead singer Max Doyle rambles, even chants, over the top, at times invoking a laissez-faire Tom Verlaine offset by the aching, morning after voice of Ela Stiles. No one has made “we don’t care” sound so friendly.
Songs is an unexpected collection of Sydney professionals and degenerates. Max Doyle, a successful Sydney photographer, and grown man, fronts the band. Guitarist Jeff Burch is an American born New Zealander who runs a small publishing house. Steve Uren lives on the beach and previously drummed for an infamous post punk band with Jeff. Ela Stiles, the only girl in the band, comes from the threshold of rural Australia.
Crepuscular and emerging, the sound comes without wrapping or novelty. Songs make a noise that could not be made anywhere else at any other time than now. This is a sound channeled through millions of hours, to reassemble itself again in sweaty downtown Sydney - city of cheap heroin, 90's excess and beautiful beaches. It couldn't fit more perfectly and they probably couldn't care less. Listless, Songs hold their hands up, avoid eye contact, and let the music play itself out.
"Songs are four people who know a lot of stuff and who make music that sounds like they know a lot of stuff." – Briony Wright / Vice Australia
"Inspired by bands like the Clean and the Go-Betweens, Songs make music that sounds like dancing around your kitchen." – Katie Ruscoe / Dazed and Confused
