TRANSAT – FUTILE MECHANICS

Transat are a band out of step with the day-glo ambitions of the Sydney scene. There’s a starkness to their sound, a DIY quality that puts me in mind of the strummy sing-alongs of NZ band The Bats, the grimy romanticism of The Dirty Three, and the claustrophobia of Forever Changes-era Love. Their means are simple (acoustic guitars and sawing violins over solid, unfussy drumming) but effective.  Blue Mountain begins as an amiable finger-picking ramble, before combusting in the weird glare of Clement Girault’s noise guitar. Waiting is a ragged waltz, all tumbling word play and thick-voiced intensity. The title track, Futile Mechanics, finds them at their poppiest, but otherwise the band doggedly follows its own idiosyncratic vision. The vocals are gruff and sometimes a little uneven, but not distractingly so. On tracks like the epic Seascape with Parallel Lines, and Hometown Curse (“Serve me more ales just to slur the details and fix my head”), they have the air of sailors at their ease, amusing each other with songs and stories during a long voyage into the unknown.
***1/2