Shrapnel – “Tranceplanetsugarmouth”
Label: Coolin’ by Sound
Album Review by Paul Macadam
Time stops for no indie rocker. If you listen to this while doing the dishes, you might conclude that Shrapnel don’t have a care in the world. But scratch beneath, and you’ll find all sorts of anxiety – not only in the words, either. “Backseat Driver” establishes this pattern from track one. Just as you’re settling into a two-chord groove, skipped beats disrupt the comfort. It’s like when your CD jumps forward after driving over a pothole. And with lines such as “Didn’t see the red”, the song’s title becomes a metaphor for situations where you feel a lack of control. On “Fraction Man”, ultra-short verses and choruses represent the sense of only half experiencing life. Incompleteness with a purpose.
An advantage of stacking the top of the tracklist with experimental songs is that those with more conventional structures benefit from the contrast. “Leap Year” builds on a slow riff which winds its way up and down a major scale. On paper that’s a recipe for tedium, but it all clicks together gorgeously. Here’s where the album title appears. To me, Tranceplanetsugarmouth is Sydney. Something about the city’s thirst for novelty and decadence is captured by that sensory overload compound word. It sure would’ve been a more apt name for the new developments than the faux-heritage Barangaroo.
“Carpet Yankers” calls The Apples in Stereo to mind with its pop-focused jamming. Organ steals the show with a part so disarmingly simple you’ll kick yourself for not having thought of it first. If you’re gonna go Magical Mystery Tour, you might as well throw the kitchen sink at it, and it’s welcome to hear someone taking the backwards-tracking effect beyond guitars and applying it to cymbals, even handclaps. Not many long songs fly by like this does. Takes considerable skill to make six minutes seem like three.
Lead single “Another Year” voices the fear of life passing you by, as droning guitar chords evoke static monotony.
(I’d have chosen this for the closer ahead of the reprise, though I am prejudiced against reprises). The runway never clears itself, yet you continue to postpone changes which might prove to be worth their difficulty, while suspecting that no amount of self-improvement can transcend your generation’s ominous forecast, because, in many material respects, millennials are damned if they do and rooted if they don’t, and I’ve heard worse excuses for a drink than the desire to obliterate that reality for a bit.
Listeners hoping to find advice on time management or theories on What It’s All About would be advised to look elsewhere. But Tranceplanetsugarmouth is an enduringly fun way to spend half an hour, and there’s not a lot more we can demand of an album.
