Dick Diver, 'Arks Up'
Dick Diver sound like underground '80s Australia. Arks Up recalls the best parts of the Hunters & Collectors discography: the songs gather around raw, trudging bass lines that sound best filling the pungent, carpeted rooms of old pubs.
With clever, multi-member pop songwriting, The Go-Betweens also come to mind: the accents not dropped but accentuated; the guitar work sharp, tonal, puncturing. The best example, ‘The Keys', is a brilliant sonic interpretation of middle class Australian youth: "I call you for the keys to my house/You live with me/If one should leave/It's you."
Not that Dick Diver is one-dimensional. It's unfair to pin them completely to past ideas, but here's the thing: for all the history their music references, it's the carefree, natural quality - strong songs, tuneful and lyrically clever - that prompts comparisons to those earlier bands. Like them, you can see Dick Diver's beginnings in basements, singing off-kilter love songs through shoddy guitar amps.
It's the integrity - what defined those great pop acts - that shines through on Arks Up. Who knows? Maybe in 30 years we'll be referencing them.
Release: EP
To Cure: Hypertension
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