Holidays on Ice

來自澳大利亞的獨立樂團 Pillage Before Plunder So pillage leads to pirates and pirates are cruel and changeable. But if you were to be pillaged by Holidays on Ice, they’d steal some of the ugliness from your world and send it to the bottom of the sea. They’re pirates of joy, not the jumping up and down in your face happy happy kind of joy, it’s gentler, subtler, closer to the joy that comes when you’ve been buffeted by storms and discover that the boat still floats and the child inside sails on. We can’t know when the sea will turn nasty again, as Dean sings, who knows when the ribbon wrapped around the bomb will unwind to reveal a terrible beauty, who knows what the bad pirates are wearing and when they’re going to come?. The opening track reminds us we’re all ‘bones by the road in the sun, that’s what we all are and the mistakes we have made will wash away. Great big old world and it doesn’t stop for anyone'. There’s philosophical accommodation here. As Angie sings on ‘Dust Bunnies’ the best questions often have no answers, and in the grand scheme of things what fate dishes out to us doesn’t really matter. But the vibe of Pillage Before Plunder is not one of capitulation, but of celebrations and encouragement. To paraphrase “Where it Starts,” you might have tried it all but that doesn’t stop new beginnings. Pillage Before Plunder is a gift of moods: tunes that accept the gentle rocking of the seas, allowing us to take the moments as they come. The album opens up inner spaces in which to reflect and create, though the spirit of rebellion lingers. On ‘Out of the Mud’, Angie suggests sweetly, huskily, all honey and cigarettes why not play at being God oneself and ‘shape a lover out of the mud’. Given the gypsy lives Dean, Angie and Naomi lead, there are meditations on settling down, most notably on ‘No Roses Grow on a Sailors Grave,” but then again the album ends in the dog house, where sailors ill-adapted to the regimens of domesticity are likely to find themselves. Once the sea is in your blood, there are always adventures on the horizon. The urge to move is hard to stop. From thoughts of an unremembered grave, two songs later Angie is singing in sensual French of eating a peach at the grave of dark-witted chanteur Serge Gainsborough. Texturally, Pillage before Plunder is superbly crafted. Sometimes it’s like putting a shell to your ear and imagining. The rolling motion of the sea, the waves the tides, a sense of cycles are all delivered with a warm, lo-fi home tinkered feel that’s combined with the richness of topnotch production. Lyrics are washed with subtle reverbs, guitars sent down to Davy Jones Locker to find their sound. Trumpets like proud but humble tugboats add a plaintive chugging dignity to several tracks. There are sea monsters, slow and ponderous, long-drawn effected chords from Naomi’s violin or Dan Luscombe’s spooky guitar. Other times it’s like browsing in the junk shops of a port town on a rainy afternoon. Odd sounds, lost and found; quirky old synths, radio static, bells and whistles, fuzzy objects, iruptions of counter melody that are playful and accidental. Every listen repays with something new and clever hidden emerging from the layers. For sailors, pirates, lovers, seekers and new beginners Pillage Before Plunder adds warmth to the echo chambers of the soul. Ed Wright.