Betchadupa: Aiming For Your Head

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Betchadupa's second album shows that a little maturity goes a long way.

The Auckland-bred, now Melbourne-based quartet have headed into their early 20s between their 2002 debut and this, their more ambitious follow-up.

But where volume one impressed with its precocious mix of scrappy, smart punk, guitar pop and the occasional folk lullaby, this one comes with more ideas crammed into some of its individual songs than many of their peers manage over an entire album.

That turns out to be Aiming For Your Head's chief virtue.

But it can also give it a few drawbacks.

Here, the band fronted by Liam Finn delivers a 12-track, art-rock mini-epic, which veers from dreamy pop psychedelia like the ornithological opening ditty My Army of Birds and Gulls) to grand riff-attacks.

There are angular rhythms, wistful tunes, fuzzed-to-the-max surf guitars and a general feeling they've indulged every studio whim while still playing to their strengths as a taut and spirited guitar outfit.

It is an album of some remarkable moments.

Like The Ocean is the Cure, which mutates from its Chills-like chiming intro, through sunny verses to a climax that is extravagant enough to bring up Queen comparisons.

Or Who's Coming Through The Window, with its New Wave stomp, added to its own Counting the Beat-styled chorus.

The comparatively low-key Weekend effortlessly shifts time signature into an exuberant chorus, its sweet verses showing that Finn junior has a thing for lyrical pondering of dirty dishes, not unlike one of his ancestors.

But all those fireworks - especially with the instrumental RT1090 at the three-quarter-mark - can make this an album to be admired rather than one you're fully engaged with throughout.

It doesn't help that Finn can often be a whimsical to the point of flippant and afterthought kind of lyricist - though perhaps we're holding him to standards of another generation.

And they're thrilling when they play it direct, like on the Pixies-esque fiery title track and the earlier single Move Over.

In the end, Aiming is carried by betchadupa's sheer askew energy and imagination.


Label: Liberation