It’s been a long time since I lived in a share house, but the memories live on. Fridges housing rancid milk containers, mouldy tomatoes and other assorted science experiments. Pantries stuffed full of two-minute noodles, baked beans and prawn crackers. Pizza boxes and empty six-pack cartons piled high like a shrine to dishevelled living. Post-it notes, overdue utilities bills, mismatching crockery and stolen beer glasses. ‘Twas the best of times, ’twas the most festering of times.
Close your eyes, and Woollen Kits provide a glimpse into that world, warts, noxious odours and all. Four Girls is the band’s second release for 2012, and it’s just as invigorating. You can’t but get fired up with the manic bass lines, frenzied beats and plaintive adolescent pleadings of Back To You; when you get to Be You, you’re sitting in the overgrown and unkempt backyard nestling a beer on a bright summer’s day. So Cold is triangulated between the Velvet Underground, The Go-Betweens and Eddy Current Suppression Ring; Please doesn’t need to plead, ‘cause you’re gazing fondly into its eyes like a love-struck teenager.
The four girls are represented by four songs on the record: Cheryl, Sandra, Susannah and Shelley. Cheryl is bashful and whimsical, Sandra wants to get everything on the table and open up the clogged lines of emotional communication, Susannah is a million-dollar love story and Shelley has its tongue down your throat quicker than you can fall through the proverbial bedroom door with inebriated abandon.
The album ends with On The Move, a lazy, meandering journey across six minutes. Maybe this is the moment of blunt realisation that it’s time to move out of the house, and to take the quantum leap into genuine adulthood. I hope not – Woollen Kits have got a good thing going, and we need more of it.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Back To You
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: TWERPS, EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING
In A Word: Charming
