Bayu and Moopie - I Won't Have To Think About You
(2017 A Colourful Storm)
How do you categorize a release like this? Curated by the two DJs--(Bayu and Moopie)-- who run Australia's A Colourful Storm record label, I Won't Have To Think About You is a bashful sidestep away from the imprint's other industrial-techno offerings, trading gurgly synths and four-on-the-floor kicks for jittery guitar chords and invariably guileless female lead vocals. Considering the side gigs for each of the LP's masterminds, it wouldn't be a stretch to call this disc a DJ set: though its 12-track setlist lacks seamless transitioning, there's rock-solid textural cohesion that glues the body of work together. As the loud, thwacking snares of The Ampersands' "Affected" spill into Pearly Gatecrashers' citric post-punk melodies, you'd swear the two bands were composed of the same members.
I Won't Have To Think About You honestly might be more akin to a compilation than a seamless mix. Though the tunes Bayu and Moopie spin span three decades' worth of twee-pop tradition, they've all blown in on the same coastal breezes of Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. The record's a scrambled family tree, tracing the sugar-rushed dissonance of early 80s acts like Maestros and Dipsos to the Shapiros' heaving sighs and plunging chords, which blurred their brief mid-90s career with the condensation of Young Adult fiction's melodrama: warm breaths into a palm, cupping your chin; a scribbled note, folded into a square passed across the classroom; muffled music seeping through cheap gymnasium speakers; the damp smell of yellowed paper glossing a too-realistic cover illustration.
There are incestuous branches that span the tree, too. Bart Cummings, founder of Library Records, is credited as a member of four bands on the album. The best of these is The Cat's Miaow, whose opening track "Not Like I Was Doing Anything" pairs frontwoman Kerrie Bolton's wavering vocals with equally anxious arrangements. In this canvas, there are strokes of The Magnetic Fields before Stephen Merritt took over their vocal duties. A closer look also reveals the wrist-wriggling urgency of Johnny Marr's guitaristry and splotches of Belle and Sebastian's heaping cuteness. The song's a solid primer for what's to come: quick, catchy, and casual. Think of the comp as an off-the-cuff conversation--"I don't mind," sings Bolton, sounding as wistfully detached as The Sundays' Harriet Wheeler. "It's not like I was doing anything."
