album
on Redline Records thru Shock
You know they’ve been
around… listeners to interview programs over the last few months will know why
it’s been 4+ years since “Maximum Sincere” which, uncannily, I was
beginning to revisit when this CD popped itself through the PO box! There was
an EP on Ivy League in 1999, but
it’s been too long between schooners, pots, handles or pints and“[ Size of the Ocean” is the newest set-of-12
from Sydney’s Big Heavy Stuff:
more of the same quality that we’ve come to expect from Greg, Carolyn,
Nick and Eliot.
It spent just last week as Triplej’s feature album, and I was saying
to myself as I sat down to listen that I hadn’t heard any of these tracks …
then Hibernate proved me wrong, straight off the bat, followed shortly by
the quasi-prog timed Two Sisters. The ensuing 50 minutes was a rebirth
of the band about whom I learned through a series of releases back late
1997-early 1998: acoustic in places, heavyish in others, radio-friendly to a
point but never pop.
As usual, BHS employ lyrics on this
record to keep the listener either guessing or agreeing… ‘Once she voted Labor,
never again/On the right it’s a mess, on the left it’s the same/Fisticuffs with
neighbours, wrecking the fence’ (Helen’s Razor, a biography about it’s almost-namesake
or is it?); ‘Whoever rides the surf/Whoever rides the waves/…/The factory’s
gone berserk/Churning out the same/Over and over again’ (Forever Sighs the
Ocean); ‘…the redhead wants some time/…/I’ve just spent the longest day
crying/Because the redhead stole my heart/… the redhead’s just gone south/…(Redhead).
Whatever it was that kept them off our radios
and out of our players for four years is behind them now, and hopefully it
won’t be too much longer until the next record… although with quality like “[ Size of the Ocean” on Redline Records through Shock! why would you have to wait til next
time?