Due to my love of cricket (for American’s…it’s like baseball only far better and with tactics) I have spent many a month watching my England ‘heroes’ getting spanked in various Australian towns and cities and have learnt to love the Aussie people/psyche.

Of course I am generalizing and I am sure they have their fair share of people that are prone to histionics, but in general, whereas us Brits are famed for their stiff upper-lip and never actually complaining in public (that sort of thing is for behind closed doors and behind backs, don’t you know) our Aussie cousins are similar in never complaining, but theres stems from a seemingly ingrained acceptance that life can be a just be a bit pants at times.

Bark All Night is the debut solo album of Dumb Things, Brisbane based Madeleine Keinonen and summates this sense of resignation as well as any music could.

Initially their is a typically Aussie sense of lo-fi jangly laconic to tracks that are best represented by Bucket of Water, Miranda, Cold Boards and Gumwrappers and Lint. All imbued with keen observations of life’s minutiae and the stoic acceptance of how they co-exist with life’s more important events, these sound like Courtney Barnett in ‘only half bothered reflection mode’.

Whilst the above aesthetic revels in lo-tempo, slacker-pop energies, the album does sidle towards mid-tempo in the title track and stand out of Head In The Clouds. Strangely enough this increased tempo does add the usual sense of sprightly that such increased energy usually provides, but somehow in the hands of Heinonen revels in a strange sense of burnished and offers the only real glimpses of genuine melancholy in the release.

Solo projects of members of well known acts, have a tendency to drift into the spheres of long lost memories. It would be a genuine shame if this beautifully laconic jangle did the same. We need more…

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