City Calm Down - Television
City Calm Down’s third album Television is a gutsy attempt by the Australian indie stalwarts to create an unrelenting stream of anthems. Through the time-honoured method of stripped back verses combined with monumentally loud chorus’ (à la Nirvana), the group achieves a polished selection of songs which are triumphant and uplifting. Simplicity, rather than inventiveness, is very much at the forefront here; what the band lack in musical virtuosity they replace with basic but huge sounding chord progressions.
Lead single ‘Mother’ is a prime example of where the band’s approach works well. A four-chord riff straight from Pete Townshend’s playbook signals the firing gun on a track which has all the makings of a hit record. ‘Mother, believe me – your children are screaming’, is the delightfully vague refrain carried along on a wave of reverb-soaked guitars and keyboard lines. Indeed, the message of the song is muddied even further when the vocals are drowned out by the immense layering of instrumentation. It doesn’t seem to matter however, because this is Triumph-Pop and the finished product is a spine-tinglingly audacious affair.
As the album progresses, however, the songs begin to meld into one an another and upon the first listening it was difficult to pick the majority apart; tracks 3, 4, 5 and 7 all contain the same chord progression (albeit in different keys). Add to this the fact that the lyrics throughout are rather indeterminate, home-spun social commentary – the title track contains the somewhat dated retort of ‘Television, you’re on my mind, mute the truth just show me a good time’ as a way to warn people of the dangers of technology – and it becomes a monotonous, tawdry listening experience.
Taken individually, the songs on Television are splendid, commercially inclined indie numbers, but the piece as a whole feels slightly hollow, given the repetitive nature of the writing on the album.
