Doug Arnott is probably one of the nicer people you could meet fumbling around the Adelaide band scene, always eager to chat and more genuinely enthralled by the joy of playing music than I could ever be. Along with his wife Jayney they play in Quiet In The Lab, a band I will try to summarise thusly:
Picture a band of 17-20 year olds sitting in an Adelaide garage with black t-shirts listening to Nirvana, Smudge, You Am I's Sound As Ever), trying to catch bands like Jebediah play on episodes of this new fangled show called 'Recovery' before picking up their guitars and churning out angry, happy, emotional songs full of chunky fuzz guitars, gang vocals and earnest, angsty lyrics. And they're good! Now, transpose that band 15 years into the future and age them accordingly. They're still good, if a little unusual in the present climate, playing music they're un-self-consciously in love with, no matter how confused snarky little post-Cold War brats like myself might be by the various obscure band names emblazoned across their T-shirts.
Perhaps the fact I spent most of the 90's watching Peter Pan and this, explains the lack of reference points for their music. I guess they remind me of the Foo Fighters in some ways, a comparison which I was reluctant to offer but one Doug seemed to embrace. I suppose he remembers the days when Dave Grohl was something of an upstart, as opposed to a slightly grittier, American Powderfinger type. Anyway, their demo from last year features the damn catchy, horny middle age pop of 'Get My Hands On You' and some utterly cathartic crunch and screams in 'Why Bother'.
Me and the boys from Sincerely, Grizzly do the backup yells at the end of "Get My Hands On You".
ReplyDeleteTotally agree about Dougie, though. He's one of the most genuine and nice people I've ever met.
If you wanted reference points, you could have just checked our influences on the unearthed site. ;)
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