Biography
What is the relevance of pop music today? As the genre approaches pension age, how do bands that love the simple interplay of guitar, bass and drums reinvent the three-minute pop song without coughing up the ghosts of its 60 year history, or morphing it into an unrecognisable mess?
Perth indie phantasms THE PREYTELLS have a way.
When they hit the scene in 2005 they experienced a quick, intense wave of success. Since then, instead of pursuing their early favour like desperate careerists, they decided to hit and run. Over the following years they hunkered down for months at a time, coming up only when they had something to show for themselves. The first salvo was debut EP COULD I CHANGE YOUR MIND in 2007, which snapped the ears of those who forgot about THE PREYTELLS back toward the band. It demonstrated songwriting strength and studio confidence beyond their years. But after its launch, they again went to ground.
They came back up in 2008 with the same tactic in mind, plus a little extra fuel. Two more EPs in that year, SHOUT/I’M SO SORRY and SACRAMENTO, showed two things: THE PREYTELLS were ready to make a deeper impression at home and abroad, and they had the musical chops to do it.
Doubt it? Their album, FLOOD SONGS / JUNE SONGS, will prove you wrong. It contains remastered versions of previously-released tracks Shout, I'm So Sorry, Sacramento and On the Lawn, and they remain as impressive as ever. Shout’s persistent piano and demented guitar lands the band midway between the Beatles and the Pixies, while Sacramento’s swagger and reverb smashes the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion into the Brian Jonestown Massacre.
But it’s the new material that rounds the band out as an important voice in Australian rock. Lead single Lord Hold My Hand builds on the band’s previous songwriting, relying less on Sacramento’s swagger and Shout’s knife-edge guitar and instead drawing sweet tension out of the interplay of its parts. A rollicking bells rhythm and wandering guitar introduces the song before an inspired glockenspiel melody takes over, and singer Will Tell croons images both quintessentially Australian and dementedly mythic: “Who are we, lying naked at the bottom of a Boab tree,” he sings in the lead up to the song’s eponymous chorus, then “You said you were the sacrificial lamb of all mankind”. It’s a hooky love song that also manages to tap into the confusion and weight of human relations in just two minutes and thirty seconds, after which a riff worthy of ELO wipes it from memory.
That is the real strength of the album – there are no place-holder songs. Every track, even slower tracks like mid-album, piano-based breather Keep Running, is imbued with its own infectious vitality, and announces itself as the most important song you have heard. An ambitious claim for a small WA band, but their music backs it up.
Though THE PREYTELLS index the history of guitar-based rock and pop throughout the album, FLOOD SONGS / JUNE SONGS is not an act of mimicry. It comes from an earnest, talented songwriting core, which strips down the music of their background to its basics and reforms it in a fashion true to their vision. What is that vision? Music that invades the body and electrifies the mind, encoded with the fractious energy of the 21st century.
MANAGEMENT
For bookings & enquiries, contact Daphne Tan at: preytells@yahoo.com.au
myspace.com/thepreytells
Instrumentation
William Tell - Guitars / Vox
Audrey Tell - Guitars / Vox
Cameron Stewart - Bass Guitar
Discography
FLOOD SONGS/JUNE SONGS LP (2009) out 11 Sep 2009
SACRAMENTO EP (2008) released independently
SHOUT/I'M SO SORRY EP (2008) released through MGM Distribution
COULD I CHANGE YOUR MIND EP (2007) released through MGM Distribution
Links
| http://www.myspace.com/thepreytells |