With so many jangle oriented bands flipping out various wonderful variants of jangly indie-pop, shy twee, gaze enlighted chiming melodies or the whole deadpan Melbourne thing, the acts that currently stand out are those that can batter a tune out by throwing it at a wall, rather than lay it out gently, to pass the current fascination with the ‘pretty inspection’.
Be Afraid can ‘batter’ with the best. Essentially this is achieved by coursing semi-manic dynamism and just sheer bloody noise, around the twisted mutations of the Pavement influenced riffs of a modern act like Clearance.
As such, tracks like Birdbrain (see below), You Lose Continue and Automatic Worry pay homage to the gerneral jangle-pop concept, but make the Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever sense of swirling jange-rock noise, the primary augmenting emphasis.
Each track has the above emphasis in this wonderful whirlwind of an EP. However Crawling Now, Some Silly Reason (see below) and My Boy reduce the intensity several notches and indeed decibels, to allow the shimmering jangled riffs that struggled for attention amid the attitude of the ‘other tracks’, to take increased prominence and allow the EP to plant both feet firmly in the realms of the exceptional.
Be Afraid are ‘Australian loud’ and U.S.A 90’s abrasive (despite being Canadian) and add some much needed attitude to the recent prettiness of our favourite genre.
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