Austin – The Preatures’ breakout EP Is This How You Feel? took its queues well. The Sydney band’s 2012 debut, Shaking Hands, introduced us to a group with a nice premise and an ambition to draw from a lot of different music, but arrangements that were too cluttered for the eclecticism to be obvious or fully appreciated. With their second release they figured it out. Along with a helping of Pixies’ quiet/loud dynamics, they seemed to follow, at least in spirit, the pared down style that made Nile Rodgers’ “Le Freak” a pop staple. Rodgers’ technique had the virtue of giving individual parts room to stretch without colliding, to carry separate hooks you could almost pick and choose from. The Preatures filled that space with sounds picked up from everywhere; country and indie pop, punk, disco, shoegaze, even a little disco. Their debut full-length Blue Planet Eyes sees them pushing that strategy to its limits, taking surprising, rapid, and (usually) productive turns.

if you listen to Is This How You Feel? its expanded range will be apparent from pressing play. Album opener and title track, “Blue Planet Eyes,” ditches their scratchy guitar sound for synth pads, though the clean, emphatic bass is familiar. As if to point out the contrast, the next track is lead single “Somebody’s Talking,” a country tinted boogie that escalates to big backing vocals in the chorus. Last year’s “Is This How You Feel?” appears next, keeping that pace while introducing a tenser sound.

There might be continuity to this record, but after track three it becomes hard to talk about the songs in chronological order. Despite the sometimes sample-platter feel of this collection of music, there’s some sources that get tapped a second and third time. 80’s and 90’s British pop seems to be the center for a lot of the record’s slower songs. Which isn’t to say they’re very similar; the band finds surprising ways to veer away from their origins.

“Ordinary” begins with a lonely guitar melody reminiscent of The Field Mice, but quickly switches timbres and moves toward shouted vocals and a powerful chorus that borrows a dun-dun from “Electric Feel.” “Two Tone Melody” keeps things softer. The clean, tinkling production draws from In Rainbows, though the drums stand out more, and the songwriting is unabashedly pop. Album closer “Business, Yeah” makes its country influence more apparent with organs and twang guitars. If it wasn’t obvious enough they point it out in the lyrics, referring to “a colder night in Memphis”.

There are also hazards to this amount of range. “Rock and Roll Rave” doesn’t have many arguments in its favor, and winds up failing to live up to its promise. The beat gets slow and thumpy, and the bass fuzzy and fat. The guitar stays the same, but the rest is an out-of-place digression toward a Trent Reznor-lite sound. The album recovers somewhat on the next track down, “Whatever You Want,” which puts the same fuzzy bass to better use on a more rollicking track.

Even with all the reference points, the band manages to make its personality felt. The bass is always recognizable and there’s territory they visit again and again—compare “Somebody’s Talking” and “Cruel.” I don’t think that’s what, in a hypothetical superstar future, is going to unmistakably tag a song from Blue Planet Eyes. It’s going to be the vocals of lead singer Isabella ‘Izzi’ Manfredi, who’s been moving closer to the position of true front-woman with every release since Shaking Hands. Co-vocalist Gideon Benson has a diminished role this time around; though he adds something every time he shows up, Manfredi’s voice is too good at matching the soft verses/loud choruses not to get most of the attention. She can evoke Amy Winehouse or Alanis Morissette, sometimes in the same song, just by shifting from a high whisper to a low shout.

Blue Planet Eyes has some failings. As much as I love it, it’s not clear what last year’s “Is This How You Feel?” is doing here. Soundcloud is just a few tabs away if I desperately need an older single. It feels like they cribbed it for the new fans that this album is almost certain to attract.  And that contributes to a feeling that these songs were selected to pre-promote the band’s next release. While the range of these songs is often a strength, the band is leaving a lot of people behind by trying to reach out to everyone.

That being said, the ad worked. I’m going to listen to their next record, and you should probably listen to this one. It’s already out in Australia, and set for a September 30 release in the U.S. But the best place to hear it may be at their ACL set, if you happen to have tickets. The band has announced an upcoming tour in support of the record, with dates in the U.S. and Australia.

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Will Jukes

Will Jukes has lived in Texas his whole life. It doesn’t bother him as much as you’d think. A Houston native, he studied English at the University of Dallas before moving to Austin in search of the coveted “Grand Slam” of Texas residencies. He comes to music journalism from a broad reporting background and a deep love of music. The first songs he can remember hearing come from a mix tape his dad made in the early 90’s that included “Born to Run,”, “End of the Line,” by the Traveling Wilburys, the MTV Unplugged recording of Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand,”, and “The Highwayman,” by The Highwaymen. He has an enduring love for three of these songs. Over the years he has adored punk, post-punk, new wave, house, disco, 90’s alternative rock, 80’s anything, and Townes Van Zandt. He’s not sorry for liking New Order more than Joy Division.

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