“You wanna be my favourite drug? You gotta be better than all those other drugs.”

So begins the first line of the debut studio album from Wollongong’s The Nice Folk. It’s an intriguing one; resonating with sneering detachment and a lustful, gritty sensuality, it sets the tone perfectly for the remaining nine tracks.

Devil At My Door is a dirty, bluesy folk-rock invocation with a low-down country twang and the gorgeous inclusion of keys, brass and strings. It opens with Josh 9 Lives’ demented-carnival keyboard riff – immediately disturbing but strangely enticing – before Captain Special K’s powerful trumpet joins in. The song swaps between a slow, oozing blues and Lax Charisma’s frenetic guitar rock, always skilfully grounded by the tight rhythm section of Angry A Lot and Stu Bob Slackjaw’s bass and drums, respectively. It feels like a harem in here.

“Won’t let you fuck me – unless you kiss me first.”

In ‘How The Hell Did We Get Here?’, singer Dave Mutton’s deep drawl is softened by Jamie-Leigh Basic’s womanly harmonies for the titular refrain – which is sung between killer lines such as, “This could be the last time hell ever looked this good/Heaven’s always looked just fine/No matter where we stood” – and also on the call-and-answer vocals for ‘I’m So Happy (You’re Leaving Me)’; his dark voice made all the more heavy by the contrast of her lighter touch.

There’s a distinct feeling of Australiana to this record too, but not in a forced or cliched way. Devil At My Door paints a lot of pictures. It evokes dried eucalypt leaves blown into the corners of a bare floorboarded shack, a chair in the corner and a pursued criminal (of the bushranger school of Australian crime) on the porch with a rapidly-emptying bottle. If it were a colour, this record would be a Russell Drysdale red. In fact, this album is like viewing a Drysdale, if you’ll allow such a tangent. It’s a hot, dry dusk, in those few moments between afternoon and evening where – in everywhere but the city – the Australian sky blazes a terrifying crimson. That heavy, humid stillness and the hushed, immobilising heat. A muted sexuality. The tension is overwhelming. Something is always about to happen. Yeah, that’s exactly what this album’s like: it’s tense and sexy and dark, and you want it to last forever.

Devil At My Door makes me proud to say I grew up in Wollongong. That in itself is a big deal. This album is fast becoming my favourite drug.

by A.H. Cayley