The Holidays
The Holidays

Gleeful Sydneysiders go for a carefree jaunt down a higgledy-piggledy cobblestone lane, pints and pies in their roly-poly bellies. Their jolly frolic is folly and they sound so British it hurts! Jingle jangle jangle go the trebly strums, flip flop flip go the wispy bangs. This will sell.

The Holidays insist that opening track ‘Holiday’ is not their theme song – fair call, but it’s certainly a cute pop song, as sweet a mission statement as you’re gonna get from this well-meaning crew. It’s an easy ride, pleasant yet plain with no surprises whatsoever despite a technically flawless execution. Track two (‘Planes’) should have been a passive number about relationship drama, with plenty of mentions of fighting and shite like that, however, the reality is far more humorous - Holidays frontispiece Simon Jones removes all the ‘wide’ ocker vowel sounds in his ‘cosmopolitan’ vocal take, rendering the tune a song about “farting in a sack/farting on planes … farting on a rooftop/farting in bars”. Hey, at least The Holidays got me to smile.

This EP demonstrates that it can be lame to be tame. If you’re going to cite Television as an influence, don’t let Television down. Develop their ideas and avoid mediocrity. Even shoving a Victorinox under your guitar strings and pretending you’re a Z-grade Sonic Youth would be preferable to sounding like a J-grade Pete Doherty (I didn’t even fully appreciate the extent of that junkie prat’s global influence until hearing this EP). In all fairness The Holidays are far from evil, but Australia’s produced far more stimulating bands.

by Adrian Trajstman