Dumbells: Up Late With 12"

Dumbells are my favourite new band to see live in Sydney since, well, when live music started happening again. They embody a quality apparent in many of my favourite Sydney groups, where pre-existing music scenes blur and new alignments form. Whatever forces brought Sam Wilkinson (Shrapnel, Sachet) , Jen May(Tee Vee Repairmann), Ben Schattner (Shrapnel, VIPP) and Ishka Edmeades (Tee Vee Repairmann, Satanic Togas....) together has unlocked a certain hard-to-describe quality of rock ‘n’ roll I personally yearn for. 

It’s hard to quantify this particular quality of r’n’r without a long list of nerdish reference points, but I think it’s how non-aligned with any particular sub-genre, or era, or tacked on caricature-ish style they are in their approach to amateur rock music that makes them not just another band in the endless sea of music. 

On one hand, a child, or even a Pavement fan could immediately be wooed by the immediacy of the hooks, melodies and charismatic group dynamic expertly, but not too expertly, captured on ‘Up Late With Dumbells’. On the other hand, cold hearted cynics will have their record collector cockles warmed by a feeling akin to discovering Big Star’s Radio City or Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartment’s Bait & Switch. 

Dumbells cross examine the classic / independent rock dialectic in a manner that’s musically informed, but more importantly intuitive. They aren’t in reaction to, or embracement of, any micro-trend but embrace the big picture of being in a humble rock band.  Dumbells do shit with their guitars, bass, drums and voices that we all know feel good, natural and exciting, but maybe in a world rife with self consciousness and cynicism, often get lost in the sauce. - Nic Warnock (Repressed Records, R.I.P Society)

Total Punk Records offshoot Mind Meld brings us the debut vinyl from Sydney, Australia’s Dumbells. I gotta say, Up Late with Dumbells feels like a pretty special record, even for someone like me to doesn’t listen to a lot of melodic indie rock-type stuff in this vein. When I first listened to the record, it reminded me of the handful of 90s indie rock touchstones I really love, like Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, Guided by Voices’ Alien Lanes, and Sebadoh’s Bakesale. As with those bands, Dumbells make a melodic jangle that sounds like the Byrds and Big Star filtered through REM and sprinkled with a pinch of classic rock absorbed from a childhood spent riding around in the back of mom and dad’s minivan. The hooks are uniformly big, whether the song has a stripped-back punky rhythm a la the Number Ones (see “Seeds” and “Bubbles”) or something gentler and/or more complex. Up Late with Dumbells sounds fucking great too, with crisp tones assembled into an imposing wall of sound that gives these songs a psychedelic depth… bands used to need a recording budget in the tens of thousands of dollars to sound this good. While Up Late with the Dumbells is meaty enough for a track-by-track analysis, I’ll keep it short and just say that if you’re looking for an ambitious, multi-faceted indie rock record with punk energy and concision, I strongly recommend checking this out.