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A Spoonful Weighs a Ton…

Pat’s declared it a dying genre but it seems Melbourne, in spite of the barbs, continues to flail about in willful post-rock arrogance well after the milk’s turned solid. Triple-billed multimeeja extravaganzas at places like the Planet Café (or the Old Bar, or the Rob Roy) leap out of the street press with enough monotony to charm to cords off inner-urban Thatcherites everywhere. Which is not to say One Hundred Years (or is it one hundred years?) associate unreservedly with the aforementioned crew. Certainly, they’ve got the earnest future’s-looking-grim widescreen aesthetic down. They’ve got shrug-the-shoulders vocal flourishes in all the (un)expected places. And they’ve got a manically scrawling violin lending obtuse Dirty Three-style tension to an otherwise straight ahead quiet-loud rock track, “Rejection OTAAG”. The dueling instrumental exchange of the first half gives way to a purposeful and connected final third that would probably stick if you saw it live. And there’s a similar bevy of valiant non-linear flourishes all over their debut EP Lindenow. But to paraphrase the ramblings of one crusty Bush Administration stickman (paraphrasing someone else) they’re really more of a known unknown. I’ve been listening to emotionally damaged creatives for a while now. Turtlenecks seem tempting. Autumn becomes a revelation. But until someone from that scene backs their judgement and sidesteps the aural clichés, interest is bound to wane (despite the present rash of packed pubs). One Hundred Years have the right idea. We might just have to wait for the album.