Talons
Talons
10 Track, LP (2009, Rice Is Nice)
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Talons’ eponymous debut album is not just a great listen, but the realisation of the untamed energy that initially won Sydney audiences over. The band rode a wave of good buzz with their Ducats EP, a disc that firmly placed Talons as a unit capable of great things.
The trio of Christian J Best (vox/guitar), Mitch Pangas (bass) and Ben James (drums) waste no time in transferring their signature racket to tape. Lead single ‘Keys And Codes’ features pounding drums and furious guitar squall, while the reckless ‘Gravitron’ is a tune overloaded with so many different ideas it threatens to implode at the next tempo change. Thankfully, these songs never manage to collapse despite the frenetic grinder that Talons put them through. Partial credit must go to Tim Carr (Ohana, Dead China Doll), whose measured and cavernous production brings an air of accessibility to proceedings.
The band have clearly sharpened their songwriting smarts since 2007’s Ducats. They cast a significantly richer and wider palette with inspired instrumentation – violins, clarinets and keyboards – and put their fascination with aural exploration to good use throughout the album’s 10 tracks. Take ‘Dazzling-Metallic-Stallions’, for example, which twists and turns in all different directions like a disjointed psychedelic trip. Elsewhere, the soft/loud surge of ‘Redheads’ and ‘Bayonet’, with its gurgling bass and reverb-soaked guitars, show the band flirting with melody and more conventional song structures to great effect.
That Talons are so willing to push their sound in bold new directions, makes their next move an even more tantalising prospect.
by Dave Ruby Howe
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I really, really like this record. A lot.