Press Club – To All The Ones That I Love

Alternative Rock | Punk

75%

 

No matter how eclectic our tastes, we all have blind spots. Certain styles or genres that you just can’t get into, no matter how hard you try. Yet, within those blind spots, I’m of the mind that there are always a couple of exceptions. Acts that aren’t your cup of tea on paper, which you nonetheless find yourself drawn to anyway. For me, punk has always been one of those genres that I rarely find myself diving in to. Too simple, too messy. Once in a blue moon however, I hear a track that fires me up, and helps me understand what people love about it. 

As there are so few acts that tick the right punk boxes in my brain, there are seldom few opportunities to get a proper fix of it when the mood strikes. Over the course of their past three records, Aussie outfit Press Club have been one of only a handful of punk bands that has consistently resonated with me. When I listen to them, it all clicks. Maybe it’s their infectious energy, maybe Natalie Foster’s vocals just exemplify how something rough, raw and messy can feel so authentic and engaging. Maybe Australia just makes the best punk bands. Whatever their secret ingredient is, I was looking forward to drinking in more of it when they announced this latest record. 

Hitting play on opening track ‘I Am Everything’, I was immediately struck by how this feels like the band at their most mellow and dreamy. There’s a greater emphasis on melody over bombast, a shift in focus that we hear cropping up at regular intervals across To All The Ones That I Love. Tracks like ‘Wilt’ and ‘Wasted Days’ dabble in the kind of bittersweet melancholic haze that reminds me of The Cure and Wolf Alice. Elsewhere we find more subdued rockers like ‘Staring At The Ceiling’ placing the inward looking lyricism firmly in the spotlight (“I’ve always felt like a second-tier human, Down on my knees while I try to feel something, I’ve never liked my own reflection, Cause looking at me I felt disconnected“). There’s a more subdued and mature approach to this album that I wasn’t expecting to find, and the band have adapted to it well. 

That said, there are certainly still moments where the band goes full throttle. ‘Champagne & Nikes’ has some killer energy to it. The stunning short-lived guitar solo absolutely rips, and the frenetic bass work is simply phenomenal. Between this track and his work on ‘No Pressure’, bassist Iain MacRae is this record’s MVP for me. Not that the rest of the band is slacking mind; Greg Rietwyk delivers another fleeting yet finely tuned solo on ‘Tightrope’, while drummer Frank Lees pulls out all the stops for the title track. It’s here, for one brief shing moment, that we find the band’s fierce punk energy working in perfect harmony with their newfound palette of dreamy melodies. Most everywhere else the band seem to favour one avenue to the detriment of the other – or occasionally neither, in the case of the few filler tracks like ‘Vacate’ and ‘Desolation’.  

To All The Ones That I Love is more in line with my tastes than any of their previous records, meeting me somewhere in the middle ground. On paper that should be right up my alley, but in practice I feel a little disappointed. I don’t want familiar territory, I come knocking as Press Club’s door when I want to step out of my comfort zone and get my ears kicked in by a feral Aussie punk record. There’s a thousand bands I could turn to for Cure-esque bittersweet bops, but seldom few bands that manage to scratch that particular punk itch for me the way they do. There’s a few electrifying hits of the good stuff to be found here, but I’ll more likely turn to one of their previous records when I’m next in need of a fix.