The John Steel Singers hail from Brisbane. There are six of them. And they freakin’ love their sixties pop. After scoring a run of pretty decent support slots (the most recent one following The Grates around the country) they’ve let us in on a sweet set of carefully arranged, brightly painted pop.
Opening with an insistent fuzz-bass riff in lead track ‘Rainbow Kraut’ they introduce a broken saloon piano and their trademark horn section and drive that thing all the way down the coast.
‘Luxembourg’ and ‘Harlequin Maid’ show off their unhealthy Beatles obsession as they move from sunny English to into shady Brisbane households. And, I mean, as if you could come from Brisbane and not put together a bunch of fun, chirpy songs. It’s Brisbane! It’s sunny everyday and their houses are built on stilts!
While the lyrics don’t pull enough of a story together and the arrangements seem no more thought-out than ‘hey, lets chuck a zitherphone in that one’, the fresh-facedness of the sounds and these kids will get you through. Pack this one in your knapsack on the way down to the beach.
