Died Pretty

Next To Nothing
Citadel, 1985

It'd be easy to spin this record at 33rpm without realising it was a 45, and that's exactly what I did the first time I played it – the undulating carnival keyboard of 'Ambergris' oozing out of the speakers like treacle instead of, had it been at the right speed, something closer to honey warmed up and turned liquid. It wasn't until the chorus kicked in that I realised the mistake. I just assumed Died Pretty had taken too many downers like every other underground band in the late eighties.

When you play it properly, 'Ambergris' and its pairing on Side A 'Plaining Days' are less miserable than simply well-paced. Both are driven by a keyboard that rises up and down like the tide over a gently-thumping bass heartbeat. When something happens, some small change in the wind sets a song into action, it swells up without any warning. You barely even notice until all of a sudden Ron Peno's singing from the top of the thrashing whitecap, his voice broadcast like a siren.

By the time you do notice it, the song is ready to fall again – receding back into the steady up and down of its rhythm. It's that organic feeling, those seamless shifts in motion, that I like most about the first side. On the other you get a hint of where Died Pretty would end up. 'Desperate Hours' is much more mechanical, an enormous rock track with hoarse vocals, abrupt stops and starts and a clanging guitar that eventually explodes in noise. It's paired with 'Final Twist', which begins with a keyboard but turns into another boisterous rock song.

It's not only the aural spectacle of 'Desperate Hours' that hints at the power of Died Pretty's later work. Both of the tracks on Side B sound like they belong in the world from the cover of Doughboy Hollow, the album that Died Pretty would become renown known for six years later – a rusted-out old car and a steel wind vane fallen in a paddock, with a mass of black clouds bearing down on them from behind. But for me that album is too blokey. Too rustic and too deliberately crafted. My favourite Died Pretty songs are on the first side of their first record – 'Ambergris' and 'Plaining Days', which flow like the water in the sea behind the storm.