Durry – Suburban Legend

Indie Rock | Pop Punk

84%

 

What makes a song anthemic? The kind of track that elicits a cheer just from the opening bars, that gets a crowd singing every word of the chorus at the top of their lungs. Not every song that aims to form that kind of connection with an audience manages to hit the mark, so what’s the winning formula? Musically I feel it’s a case of like-for-like – the energy you bring to the table is directly proportional to the energy you receive in return. If you want people to get hyped up, give them a shot of adrenaline to get them started. If you want folks to sing their hearts out back to you, then you first need to sing to them with that same passion. 

There are plenty of fired up tracks out there though that don’t deliver a deeper connection, so that’s clearly not the whole story. For a true anthem, the kind that takes over your body like a poltergeist, there’s a secret ingredient that’s harder to pin down. It’s about exposure, and capturing the zeitgeist. An anthem is a rallying symbol; you need to give them something to rally behind, something to connect with, and then play it far and wide for everyone to hear. Make it an event, the thing on everyone’s lips, like a proper old-school Hollywood blockbuster. 

Musically Suburban Legend has the first part down. Sibling duo Durry deliver earworm indie rock melodies, punctuated with occasional bursts of pop punk hyperactivity, as reliably as clockwork on their debut album. There’s a unique snarl and grit to Austin’s lead vocals that somehow adds an extra kick of conviction to every word that comes out of his mouth. From the delightful driving bass on the title track, to the synth inflected sugar-rush melodies of ‘Little Bit Lonely’, to the bridge of ‘Hasta La Vista Baby’ that recalls the outro of ‘Under Pressure’, the pair always deliver something engaging. Even in the few instances where it feels like they maybe had a little more gas in the tank still to give, on tracks like ‘Losers Club’ and ‘TKO’, it never feels like they lose sight of the mission. Every track feels like it was made with an audience in mind in some way. I’m reminded of Catfish And The Bottlemen’s debut, as in my mind they share the same M.O. – not straining to set the world on fire, but focusing on hitting the mark every time. Every track earns its place, offering something great so reliably that you could set your watch by it.

As for the second part, Suburban Legend doesn’t have that Hollywood blockbuster quality. Instead it reminds me of those films you’d watch religiously as a kid with your friends and family. Constantly quoting and referencing them, only to grow up and realise it wasn’t a universal experience, and hardly anyone outside your circle ever saw it. Not that it matters, it’s still a blockbuster in your heart, it was there when you needed it. Durry’s debut prides itself on being a cult classic. Sometimes a message benefits having focus anyway. Movies about the fate of the world rarely hit as hard as when the stakes are something real and relatable.

That’s where this album excels; its relatable lyricism. Detailing the struggle of the daily grind, and trying to cope with the realisation that the odds were stacked against you from the start. I was taken in by the sardonic self-deprecating humour of early singles ‘Who’s Laughing Now‘ and ‘I’m Fine (No Really)‘, where Durry most poke fun at themselves for being screw-ups, but if anything the band are at their best when they’re being earnest. Whether that’s about starry-eyed kids trying to figure out their place in the world (“you could cut right through the hormones with a knife, and we were all just dumb kids trying to fit in but trying to stand out right, and the world was ours but the mall closes at nine” on ‘Mall Rats’), or jaded young adults coming to terms with the broken capitalist hellhole they’ve inherited (“now we’re just big kids living in an old man’s world, when’s it gonna be our turn” and “what’s the point of pulling up these bootstraps when you glued them to the ground” on ‘Worse For Wear’). The songwriting is perhaps at its most potent on ‘Trauma Queen’, as the pair make a defiant call not to bow to familial pressure, nor repeat the mistakes of past generations. 

Durry’s debut doesn’t have the “secret ingredient”, it makes its own, best heard in the encouraging closing refrain of ‘Encore’. Sometimes you don’t want to be a song for all people, sometimes you want to be the right song for someone who needs it. While few of us are living the life we thought we’d be, saying “we’re all in the same boat” doesn’t carry half the weight as a couple of misfits saying “hey, we’re screw-ups too”. Suburban Legend is full of heart, wit, and harsh truths, and feels all the more anthemic for it.