Renown for their infectiously witty take on indie-pop/rock, Ball Park Music has taken a bold DIY approach to their latest release Puddinghead; renting out a tattered fibro shack in suburban Brisbane in order to write, record and self-produce what would impressively be their third album release in a mere two year period.
Lead single ‘She Only Loves Me When I’m There’ kicks of the album and with it brings an experimental sense of ambience through a slow-burning intro that showcases Cromack’s blissfully warbling vocals before augmenting the gusto in a synth-laden concoction of infectious riffs, hooks and cosy interplay of harmonies between Cromack and resident bass-babe Jennifer Boyce.
But the experimentation does not stop there. From the ample influence of The Beatles on ‘Next Life Already’, ‘Teenager Pie’ and ‘Polly Screw My Head Back On’, to the late ’70s funk/disco feel of ‘A Good Life Is The Best Revenge’. And then there is the pessimistic jubilation and keyboard sections of ‘Everything Is Shit Except My Friendship With You’. And of course the killer Austin Powers meets The Doors organ work on ‘Struggle Street’.
While ‘Trippin’ The Life Fantastic’ and ‘Cocaine Lion’ are drenched in intergalactic, digital sounds combined with spaced out drug references; enough to understandably make one question whether the band perhaps got a little too under the influence. “Met a girl / Deep in space / The universe was flipping aces / On the table / Like a Cocaine Lion” – it’s enough to make one experience the urge to peer inside the vastly eccentric and presumably kaleidoscopic mind of Sam Cromack.
Puddinghead is an insightful yet deliberating glimpse of life’s little intricacies through the cosmically wandering mind of front-man Sam Cromack, who unceasingly conveys his nonsensical obscurities with charming cynicism, untamed wit and bold intelligence. Only this time around there is an increased sense of warmth to the tracks. Allowing the listener to envisage that little fibro shack in which it was created, the kind of home that may seem a derelict to the eye but so brims full of character and comfort; elements that are encapsulated into the album, whilst still maintaining to deliver vigorously energetic, somewhat bipolar kicks in all the right places.
Ball Park Music is in their prime.
8.5/10
Reviewer: Chloe Webb