This sounds great, but I’m turning it up anyway.
Aussie trio Dune Rats (or ‘The Dunies’) return for their fifth album; ‘If It Sucks, Turn It Up’, and despite the title, this release does anything but suck. It’s a boisterous miscellany littered with slapstick lyrics and euphonious guitar solos, and exactly what we’ve come to expect from the Brisbane based band.
We start the album with the title track, opening on a spoken “Have you heard their new stuff? Yeah, it sucks!”. Dispersed with autotune and a repetitious chorus that’s bound to make this track a festival hit, the song comments on how fans of a band can be totally unreceptive to any kind of a change in their music. It’s a snarky song against entitled fanbases that would make SOFT PLAY proud.
Dune Rats are hardly strangers to the occasional illicit substance. One of their most popular music videos features vocalist Danny Beus and drummer BC Michaels smoking a sizeable amount of marijuana in under three minutes. It’s actually quite impressive. This new album chooses not to shy away from their reputation, with plenty of lyrics about getting drunk and/or high. It’s just synonymous with the band at this point. The song ‘Cheapskate’, (one of my personal favourites on the album), includes the lyric “You’ve got your friends with the Benz in the hills, well I’ve got my friends who are bent on some pills.” It’s another classic coltish Dune Rats lyric we know and love them for.
‘Beers, Bongs & Bullshit’ is a great album closer. Along with ‘Solar Eyes’, it’s one of the more laid-back songs on the album. Simply about sitting back with your friends after a long day and indulging in a few bad habits together. Paired with a country-like instrumental, it’s a fitting contrast to the thrashy opening number.
Strangely, this album evokes a sense of nostalgia and a bittersweet sadness. Dune Rats have a way of making you feel like you’re listening to music that your friends made. They feel like the band you go to see play your local pub on the weekends. It’s an album that sounds like home. If there’s one thing that can be said about Dune Rats’ latest release, it’s that it is just so fun. It’s fun to listen to, and it’s clearly going to be fun to hear live. These songs are so packed with energy and it’s wonderful that the album doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are many words to describe ‘If It Sucks, Turn It Up’, but ‘sucks’ absolutely is not one of them.