The first time I heard of Absolute Boys was a rather strange gig I went to at Sydney’s GoodGod Social a few years back. The international headline was Sun Araw, whom I had nominally gone to see and who were largely disappointing. First on the bill was Donny Benet playing his first ever live show. As charming as he was, I really didn’t quite get the moustache and noodling synth and guitar lead breaks. I still don’t really get it, though always find myself attracted to him as a persona based on that performance. The two acts between those, however, were the real highlights. One was Holy Balm, for whose live shows I have a great love, and the other was Melbourne’s Absolute Boys. I was impressed enough with them to have a chat with bassist/singer Will Farrier after the show and buy copies of two singles they had on sale. Bizarrely, both were 12″ records which contained one 3-4 minute track on each side and the longest runout grooves I’ve still ever seen. These were quite accurate recreations of their live sound, simple, dry guitar/bass/drums production with hugely imaginative arrangements, angular rhythms and jagged guitar work. The closest touch stone I could think of at the time was My Disco, a band with which they’ve regularly played live.
Heavy Flow both builds on those foundations and takes the Absolute Boys sound to new terrain. While sticking to instrumentation utilising solely their chosen three instruments and voice, the production opens out their sound. Using quite traditional studio tricks – various reverbs, some subtle phasing, analog delays – and the strength of their arrangements, the band create sounds which are far more varied and interesting than a reliance on the basics might indicate. A real highlight is Kino Versoza’s drumming, which often forgoes standard rock timekeeping for more exploratory, though drillingly repetitive and propulsive hi-hat workouts. These reflect the dub influences that the band cite as a particular inspiration to their sound. A big shift in their sound is in the melodicism of Farrier’s singing. Often reminiscent of Animal Collective in the meandering melodies and Brian Wilsonism of the vocal timbres, these are actually a great foil to the minimalism of much of the music, creating a mutually beneficial contrast between voice and instruments. Rather than aping their influences, they’ve begun to synthesise them into their own sonic universe.
The album maintains a warm, inviting texture throughout, in spite of the minimalism of its structures and the spikiness of the individual instrumental elements. Lyrically, things are fairly vague across the album, the voice acting more as another timbre than a bearer of meaning. This is played out to its most extreme in ‘Twin Spirit’, where the lyrics were derived from anglicising the random gibberish Farrier sung in the original demo when the song was being written. The effect is to remove the music further from the cerebral, heading straight for the emotive cortex. With all the elements reinforcing each other in this endeavour, the effect is often dizzyingly beautiful.
The large moves forward that Heavy Flow signal in relation to their early work is greatly encouraging. That this is a debut album is fairly remarkable, given the surety and confidence with which the music resonates. Further development can only be a good thing but, for now, Absolute Boys have delivered an album that is wholly satisfying, using a swathe of disparate influences to shape a sound of their own.
Adrian Elmer
