From its hurdy-gurdy opening on Spin the Wheel, you quickly get the idea that Books With Broken Spines has been crafted with care. Its tales play out against a lush backdrop of sounds built around guitar. But it's grand in the manner of a long-patronised art deco pub rather than a slick five-star hotel. Occasionally, on tracks such as This Feels Like, the lyrics struggle to keep up with the vaulting ambition of it all. But elsewhere the band delivers in perfect measure. The big and bold Occupation is just ragged enough around the edges to ensure that a modest 194 seconds leaves you wanting more. Drink Till You Drown, which already has been a single, is as wry as you like but never crosses the line into nasty. The obligatory melancholy has the local hue of summer afternoon sadness rather than rain-swept Brit-rock bleakness. Ten tracks long, it's a satisfying mass of material from a band building up steam.
Expansive Melbourne-via-Perth emotional types return.
Fourth Floor Collapse began with much promise on their debut album, Half Deserted Streets. Since then, the band have had line-up shuffles, moved to Melbourne and retained a persistence needed to 'make it' in Australia. The group are now branching out musically, too: 'Spin the Wheel' is a wild mix of playful sounds and intrigue, finding the band opening up and toning down their over-emotional delivery. 'Take the Fight Outside' has a dense sound, but still features room to breathe - and the space across the whole set helps the songs to soar. Perhaps Fourth Floor Collapse learnt from the mistake of over-reaching on their last album. Books with Broken Spines is just right, lasting a scant 10 tracks. 'Scaling Walls' ramps up the energy level in a set that finally delivers on the band's promise.
Like John Howard in the year before his first election victory, Perth's Fourth Floor Collapse can look around the musical landscape and say, 'the times will suit us'.
Three ever-improving albums into their career, they aren't novices or followers of trends. FFC's dramatic rock, with its flaunting of high emotion, thickly piled-on sounds and theatrical flashes, is in its moment.
The most obvious comparison is with Coldplay, and you can certainly see that in songs such as the heart-pulsing Occupation, with its single-line guitar intro and emotion-strained vocals.
But I would put them among groups like Melbourne's Augie March, Montreal's Arcade Fire and Portland's Decemberists. Although FFC don't have the lyrical and melodic genius of those groups, they do show a similar feel for fully-coloured atmospheres in which small stories can become grand moments (Drink 'til you drown), or large emotions arrive simply (Well Lit). They will be worth watching.
Speaking of Crowded House, there is something joyfully reminiscent of Split Enz on the second album from this Brisbane outfit. Opening track Spin The Wheel is a raucous, piano-driven romp, which announces this ain't no retro rockin' musical homage but sets up an album which veers adeptly between quiet, acoustic moments (Well Lit) and transcendent anthemic choruses (Drink Til You Drown). Refreshingly trend-free, these songs are epic pop. A confident and ambitious musical statement.
nb the band are still in Melbourne :)
From the haunting Ring-A-Ring-A Rosie opening of the first track Spin the Wheel, it became apparent that Books With Broken Spines, Perth outfit Fourth Floor Collapse's third album, is to be something special, a record as poignant in the cold dawn of the morning as a sweaty road trip along the coast. Ten diverse songs will send the listener through many emotions, from the desperately tragic Ashes ("like the ashes/From the fire/Fly up then rest in the ground") to the inciting Take the Fight Outside ("Take a swing at him/Come on and let the fight out"). Handcrafted lyrics are as ambiguous as they are poetic, giving creative licence to the listener to make their own meaning from singer Michael Miller's vocals. Comparisons with Turin Brakes and, at more tender moments, Badly Drawn Boy, would surely be appreciated by the modest three piece, whose previous releases From the Cold and 2001's debut Half Deserted Streets have garnered the band serious national airplay, as well as a swag of WAMI awards.
Formed in 1998, FFC have toured extensively throughout Australia ever since, their acclaimed live shows seeing them support bands as diverse as The Tea Party, Counting Crows and the John Butler trio. With the backing of a full band behind them, their live show would be intense, if the songs on this album are any indication. Great songs reign, from the serene acoustic Well Lit to the first single Drink 'Til You Drown, full of choruses as overwhelming as anything the Polyphonic Spree could hope to achieve.
At first, tracks such as This Feels Like... might imply a sound akin to fellow Western Australians Eskimo Joe (especially comparing the vocals stylings of Miller and Kav Temperley), however it is intricate and intense harmonies and perfectly used distortion that separate FFC from the generally predictable Eskimo Joe. Books With Broken Spines is a great record and if Fourth Floor Collapse continues producing such quality albums, this is a band that could worm their way into the consciousness of music fans across the world. Top notch.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
The elevated sound of another WA outfit to capture your attention.
Since they came together in 1998, Fourth Floor Collapse have joined the ranks of the amazing bands that have come out of Perth.
Shortly before they relocated from the west to Melbourne, they began work on this third album and it confirms why they've been receiving heaps of recognition at home and why the word is spreading about them.
With vocalist Michael Miller setting the scene with all shades of regret switching up to a more soaring sound, they show distant echoes of the more refined of British pop bands, mining a similar emotional territory as Coldplay and their ilk (starting out slightly morose but soon finding an uplift). But they do it with more dynamics and more passion, a point most clearly made in tracks like Occupation and This Feels Like... It's sadly sweetened pop with swirling intricacies and yearning melodies but with plenty of jangling or chiming guitar crispness to stir your senses. It peaks with Drink 'til you Drown, its mournful but rising harmonies insisting you join in, but the overall standard of all 10 tracks here means that we're likely to be hearing a lot more of Fourth Floor Collapse.
