Russell HughesDZ Deathrays – Bloody Lovely (I Oh You // Alcopop)
Genre: Rock
DZ Deathrays are three albums into a career that started playing gigs at house parties in Queensland and in many ways the duo are moving beyond those party rock ambitions.
While debut album Bloodstreams was highly rated, it was a rough and juvenile record that concentrated on the excesses of the weekend and Monday regrets. The debut was a headspinning firestorm of trash rock, while 2014’s Black Rat and particularly Gina Works At Hearts showed a slow osmosis towards their current sound by the Bundaberg boys.
The album is named after an Australian turn of phrase and is everything that the country pretends to be: muscular, rugged and full of sharp edges. But just like their native land, there is a softening of the edges that has occurred naturally over the past decade or so.
Bloody Lovely opening tracks Shred For Summer and Total Meltdown are the first few tracked teased out to the public and both include big guitar riffs and the softer edges that the band have moved towards.
The album was written across the whole of 2016 while both Shane Parsons and Simon Ridley were living in different cities, but despite those challenges it doesn’t feel disjointed. Lyrically their content has developed, although there is still a ‘take it easy’ approach to song writing, typified by the short sharp shock Bad Influence.
Lonely The Brave have truly arrived with stunningly original Rudux
From the flows the melocholy and more introspective Over It, that features a reluctant blast of guitar from Parsons. Back_Forth is a stripped down hit of the party punk that kicked off DZ Deathrays’ career and Bloody Lovely is finished off with the progressively introspective Afterglow and Witchcraft pt. II, which drags the album out of its dark hole and injects some dancing vigour into the record’s final moments.
RUSHONROCK RATED: 8/10 Blood lovely.