Review: Clones and Clones - Hobart+Melbourne (Compilation)

Over the past year, there has been a surge in the documentation of Hobart music.

Whether it is with the intention of exposing local artists or the making of an archival

artefact, recent compilations such as Community, Melodica, Three Minutes In A Carpark and the annual (but still mostly irrelevant) Amplified have all more or less focused on particular genres or aspects of the Hobart music scene. Community featured the cusp of an indie-rock/pop underground, Melodica had folk, Three Minutes In A Carpark with noise music, and Amplified with 'commercially viable/commercially produced' songs.

The first release from local blog/label Clones and Clones bucks this trend, not through an attempt at covering different genres (as all of these tracks could easily slip into another Community), but through its pairing of Hobart artists with Melbourne artists. It's a cross-city compilation that mixes tracks from five Hobart bands alongside songs from five Melbourne groups. While Hobart + Melbourne puts the two cities shoulder-to-shoulder, it is less of a statement on the relationship between two music scenes and more a group of bands who share either social ties or live bills.

Hobart + Melbourne kicks off strongly with a high-quality triplet of songs, beginning with East Brunswick All Girls Choir’s wonderfully structured “Serralves”. Taken from their debut EP, it begins as a folk croon before dropping the vocals and stretching into a noisy phase of increasing tension, inundated with guitar feedback. Finally it explodes, as a powerful rock version the first section merely outlined.

Following the same folk thread that traced “Serralves”, Transcription of Organ Music contribute “A Farmer’s Work Is Never Done”, a new song in the same vein as their Community-endnote “Eye For An Eye”. Starting small with soft guitar strumming and a minor percussive background, it slowly bellows into the full Transcription band (featuring piano highlights), revealing a track that is neither pushy nor immediately gratifying. Damon Bird’s vocals are (still) something to be marvelled at.

The triple-treat ends with the compilation-exclusive “Eye Sore”, one of the most melodic Moe Grizzly tracks to date. I’ve probably bored you already with excessive adjectives, so I’ll keep this one simple - it’s pretty brilliant. Moe Grizzly are normally great, but this is song is fucking great. Scuzz/fuzz/anti-buzz blues rock, at its park, with the super hazy electric guitar playing off against a high-end bass hook.

After this sublime folk/fuzz/folk/fuzz threesome, the Native Cats throw in “I’ve Been Replaced”, a largely uninteresting pop offcut from either their debut Always On or their as-yet unreleased second offering. The bass line is repeated, the chorus is repeated, the drum machine is repeated ad nauseum – it’s a repetitive song, incessantly so. While many of their album tracks feature repetition, it was never so bluntly tedious. If it catches you off guard, you might get away with calling it ‘memorable’, but even then it’s too simple for its own good. While some of this boredom could be glazed over if the lyrics – a core part of the bands appeal – were up to scratch, even those are throwaway leftovers, and just used to propel the repetition. And then it’s back to Melbourne’s [via Hobart] Witch Hats for some more noisy rock music.

The rest of the music that follows is enjoyable, with Teeth and Tongue’s “Sad Sun” and The Stabs’ “Slow Down” being two later highlights.

While normally I wouldn’t feel so compelled to write about an album in track order - since it feels too list-y and smacks of cookie-cutter reviewing – I have done just that here [what, writing in track-order, or a cookie-cut review?]. Here, where both differing localities and differing genre attempts to sit beside each other, analysing the sequencing seems vaguely appropriate. While the compilation features three less abrasive pop tracks (the Native Cats, Pikelet, Paint Your Golden Face), it’s only the previously mentioned Native Cats song that sticks out like a sore thumb. Whereas Paint Your Golden Face’s inclusion (taken from their self-titled album) sounds out-of-context and tacked-on at the closing of the compilation, it isn’t a great detriment to the overarching feel of the collection; nor is Pikelet’s exclusive “Man Hat” as a mid-sequence breather. Everything else flows freely.

As a physical document of time and place(s), Hobart + Melbourne comes packaged with two pieces of commissioned work to represent each city. One, an essay, the other, a drawing. “Hobart” by Andrew Harper is the essay half, and is more of a retrospective of the previous twenty years in Hobart music, rather than a tell-all of contemporary Hobart music culture. Presented on a nice semi-translucent stock, I can imagine it’ll be reread every once in a while down the line. I mean, it’s available to read via the Clones website already, but who wants to read music scribblings on the internet?

I don’t know how accurate Steph Hughes’ hand-drawn map of Melbourne is, which happens to be the second included work, but I’d still take it with me on my next journey to Melbourne. If it actually took me where I wanted to go – great! Failing that, it could be useful for both its entertainment value and the mini cultural tidbits it offers.

Hobart + Melbourne, a collective representation of two neighbouring scenes, favours accessibility over attempting to make any particular statements on the relationship between two cities. It notes that the CD is only ‘the briefest of introductions to each city,’ and prompts you to delve further into the respective scenes. As such, it could be seen as a point of initiation for many people – and yes, if that all it intends to do, it does it well. Apart from the Native Cats’ track being a blight on their own (usually good) work, Hobart + Melbourne is an enjoyable compilation. It is not, however, particularly reflective of any aesthetic or creative bridge between Bass Strait, merely a social one. It doesn’t address the mythical ‘exodus’ of Hobart youth to Melbourne, nor any particular kind of point-of-shared-interest for the two cities; and instead relies on two pieces of commissioned work to delve into these ideas of Hobart/Melbourne culture. It’s a shame, then, that both the essay and the drawing are created from the mindset of each respective city – it’s Andrew Harper’s Hobart and Steph Hughes’ Melbourne, but never Clones and Clones’ Hobart and Melbourne. 

At least the music’s pretty great.

&c.