THE THIRD album from the Aussie indie-pop trio is like the child in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: "When she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad she was horrid.”
The band - Riley Jones, Louis Forster (son of The Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster ), and James Harrison - emerged as a breath of fresh air with their 2016 debut Up To Anything, drawing from 1980s indie and C86 styles, while 2018’s We’re Not Talking, expanded their sound and was a brilliant encapsulation of the adolescent experience.
Still in their very early 20s, Mirror II finds further growth and maturity in their sound. Eighties lo-fi indie sounds remain present, but so is an increasingly sophisticated left-field pop and shoegaze - any 90s veteran will have a pleasant shiver down the spine when they hear the epic ‘Desire’. Its inspired middle eight alone could have made a brilliant song.
When Jones and Forster sing together, their male/female vocals blend to create something poignant, yearning, magical, and dream-like, and at its best (‘In The Stone’, ‘The Chance’, ‘Desire’, ‘’Til Dawn’ ), Mirror II shows a deep understanding of the history and development of indie, but crucially an ability to make those styles relevant to now, and a suitable means through which a new generation can express themselves.
The album’s Achilles Heel is Harrison's ill-judged attempts to write songs in a Syd Barrett manner. They aspire to a ramshackle, off the cuff, whimsey, but sound amateurish, clumsy, and rapidly descend into irritating silliness.
Barrett's eccentricity was never forced, his whimsy came naturally, but had a darkness which gave his songs a real edge. Harrison’s woeful three numbers have none of those qualities, and neither do they have the grace and beauty of Jones and Forster at their best.
