EL MOPA – THE METAL YEARS

One must ask the question of El Mopa – where have you been? Occasionally seen thrumming it out at the Hopetoun, or many years ago as the backing band for Darren Hanlon, this band have lived the last 6 years largely in the shadows. So, at last, they have given us a new record – the Metal Years. Being familiar with El Mopa’s twisted country-rock sound, it seems unlikely that the title comes from some foray into doom or grindcore music. Rather, these songs seem like a musical reflection of rocky times, embroiled with that very Australian blend of slacker rock and progressive guitar noise that sits El Mopa on the same shelf as Built to Spill or early Pavement. These songs are at once joyous and heartbroken, full of frenetic energy and rather well-recorded, in particular the feverish I See A Strobe and the buoyantly bittersweet Riding Le Rien. Everyone gets a turn at lead vocals here and there, and the vocal harmonies throughout are muscular and emotive, bound together with Simon Wooldridge’s distinctive howls. Produced, recorded and mixed at the hands of Emma Hoy over the course of a staggering six years, this record can be seen as a kind of exhausted memoir, and so it seems that El Mopa have finally reached the summit; and at the top is a very nice record indeed.

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