Don’t be fooled by appearances – they can often be extremely deceptive. The title of the debut album by Australian pop-punks Bleeding Knees Club [Facebook/Twitter] may suggest an indifferent shrug of the shoulders and shoes non-committally scuffing the ground, but Nothing to Do is packed with purpose. The best thing about about this album, aside from its songs, all of which are brilliant (and in BKC’s line of work, you do not often get that high a level of consistency), is that it knows exactly what it’s doing all the time. Full to the brim with reckless abandon and a sense of fun most bands would sell their soul to obtain, the record stuffs 12 songs into 27 minutes.
Did someone say The Strokes? Did I hear mention of Tokyo Police Club? The Gold Coast group won’t be bothered with such comparisons, as they seem to have quite an old-fashioned approach to things and are clearly set on doing them their own way. Slick production? No chance – this is rough-and-ready punk that wears its pop heart on its sleeve. A lot of these songs are barely more than two minutes long, but if you’re worried about such a quick-firing attitude resulting in the album passing you by, don’t be – Boy In Lust, Brain Waves and the title track do a lot in even less time: about one minute and fifty seconds for all three.
Going by the song titles (Teenage Girls, Beach Slut, Lipstick, Girls Can Do Anything – can you see a theme emerging yet?), it’s clear that the duo have one main thing on their mind: the four-letter word called love. What the album lacks in variety of subject matter, though, it makes up for in bucketloads of exuberance and enthuasiam. Sure, what the pair do has been done before and will be done again, but it’s not often nowadays that straight-ahead, razor-edged punk is done quite as well as this. Uptempo would appear to be their default setting, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that – you won’t find all that much variety on this album, but it’s not really a concern when the entire thing is a complete knockout.
Nothing to Do is one of the most vibrant and downright fun albums I’ve heard in quite a while. the name ‘Bleeding Knees Club’ suggests that the band got those bleeding knees while outside having the absolute time of their lives, because the record sounds like that from front to back. If you’re not reeled in by Teenage Girls – and this would be hard to do because it’s one of those songs that has no problem at all getting into your head – then it may well be that you’ll want nothing to do with this album. I can’t see that happening, though, if I’m honest: this album is pretty much irresistible.
Nothing to Do is out now via Columbia.
