This Sydney/Melbourne trio have an ‘ornery band name and lyrics as under-wrought as a text message. “I was so crazily wrong / I was so unbelievably dumb / I am wildly in love / And this is how I always feel,” sings bass player Ela Stiles (Songs) on ‘Always Here’ in a manner so guileless it must be studiously so.
But Bushwalking is anything but ordinary, despite (or perhaps because) both Stiles and drummer Nisa Venerosa (Fabulous Diamonds) being self-taught players. The band’s chemistry is sourced in the stern yet sensual harmonies of Stiles and Venerosa, whose voices, and personas, are intriguingly interchangeable. Live, too, the women share a standoffish beauty.
Guitarist Karl Scullin labours the hardest, using Stiles circular, plodding basslines as the dark background for his colourfully-sketched style. Venerosa, meanwhile, holds the space staunchly, tightly coiled around the guitars, her light touch deceptively expressive – never dominating, always alert.
The elements combine powerfully on ‘No Enter’, its post-punk leanness fleshed out with heavy-handed dub; a seven-minute journey that’s over just as you start sinking in. The next song, ‘Neetneves Eno’, capitalises on the disorientation that lingers, with Stiles and Venerosa hovering above its damaged guitars, raining down spooky, spectral harmonies that approximate laughter; an angelic sound in a deliciously hellish place.
Like this? Try these: Fabulous Diamonds, Commercial Music; Bushwalking, First Time
[rating: 3.5]
