It’s one of the best Melbourne debuts this year.
Deceivingly simple and effortlessly clever at once, the debut album from Gamjee finds the fuzzed-out family-band rewriting their own rule book.
While last year’s Crooked EP leant into classic garage-psych mayhem, Legacy Project has Gamjee throwing listeners off any scent left behind by their previous release.
Defined by its zigzagging guitars, hiccuping grooves and Sam and Lily Harding’s sweet and sour vocals, Legacy Project stands out thanks to its desire to spiral off unpredictably at every chance possible. Almost instantly, the title track has us on our toes as we’re bombarded by waves of erratic guitars, manic yelped vocals and off-kilter beats, the band occasionally disappearing into blurs of frantic noise just to re-emerge moments later with their pop smarts firmly in tow.
For the following 30 minutes, this mood doesn’t let up. From the grimy sunshine-pop of ‘European Cars’, and through ‘The Smallest Incidents’, ‘Popped Collar Thoughts’ and ‘Too Many Times’, Gamjee hold us captivated with every left turn and mood swing as they showcase their knack for clever songwriting mixed with an eye for absurdity.
Where Gamjee truly shine is when they flirt with styles they’ve previously not touched – notably on the gentle psychedelia of album highlight ‘A Painter’, with its stirring chords and swelling strings, or the fiercely compelling blur of genres that is ‘Guessing Window’. And as all the grime is eventually peeled back with the freak-folk warble of album closer ‘Sink In Dirt’, all that’s left to wonder if where Gamjee might take us next.
