Beans are a Melbourne-based garage band that for the past week has truly blown me away with their amazing, unique sound of psychedelia mixed with funk and a dash of Australian garage-rock with their brand-new LP ‘Boots n Cats’. The album is so vivid with its layers of prominent and fantastic drum work, distorted and rhythmic guitar riffs providing a great backdrop for the listener’s imagination, funky but at times gloomy basslines and the peculiar, rewarding use of an organ playing pronounced complimentary parts in many of the album’s great 11 tunes. All those ingredients create a recipe for a phenomenal album to get stuck into and come back to whenever you feel like you want to feel the music.
The lead single, track four ‘ Haunted’ is one of those songs that you can get lost in and space out. Due to the rich layers of distortion from the guitar, the contrast of the angelic, smooth organ work, the light but effective cymbal heavy drumming and the groovy bassline creating this spacey, atmospheric and timeless track allowing the listeners to travel to wherever they want in their psyche. This song gave me an overwhelming bout of nostalgia because of the simple but substantial chorus “I’m haunted by the fear of failure”, creating this bounce pad for me to travel into past events and ponder what-ifs and what could have been. Such an emotive tune that you should check out and explore where it takes you. This being the lead single for this project was a great idea, the song encapsulates the album’s vibe and certainly made me want to listen to the album.
‘Dreaming Daisy’, the album’s tenth song, integrates the atmospheric richness from their psychedelic side with heavy distortion, loudness and uncomplicatedness from their garage rock roots. The start of the tune, as the title suggests, is very dreamy and weightless, because of the bountiful instrumentation and the mesmerising, compressed vocals chanting about a girl in your dreams. The abstract nature will make the listener wander and visualise whoever they’ve been thinking or dreaming of. The song then dynamically drifts into this intense interlude of loud distorted guitars and drum fills, sort of interrupting the dream, like waking up in the middle of the night. The end of the tune ends fantastically with this great fuzzy, scratchy and straightforward guitar solo in the centre of the mix to wake up the listener. A beautiful mix of roots and genres combined to make this song a memorable listen and one that sticks in your mind.
The instrumental tracks on the album such as ‘Kookaburra’ and ‘Siamese Blundstone’ are two perfect examples of the band knowing what sounds they wanted and what worked well, for them and the audience. ‘Kookaburra’ goes for more of a straightforward rock feel with the great fuzzy distorted guitars, then adds features like the organ for vibrance in the mix. The song grows as it progresses adding more sounds and feels, plus the growing Vigor of the guitar’s saturation towards the end is almost head-banging.
In contrast, ‘Siamese Blundstone’ is more beat and rhythm-focused, opening with great drumming, interspersed with a funky bass then almost gets blown out of the water by the song’s main instrument and driving force, an organ playing this psychedelic ‘70s riff, almost feeling like The Doors in that respect. Making the song so infectious and groovy. At points in the song, the organ is replaced with these tremendous guitar licks and back again, toing and froing, wrestling for the main stage, the ultimate victor being the organ ending his reign with a corking little solo.
Beans have shone through in this project, focusing on more of a drumbeat, funky and psychedelic sound on this album has seriously paid off because the album is so electric, full of character and flavour. The band deserves every bit of exposure and recognition they should inevitably gain from this LP and they deserve those thirty-five minutes of undivided attention from you, the listener. It was such a pleasure to review this piece of art and I hope there are more great projects to come from them in the future.
Beans: Boots N Cats – Out 15th March 2024 (Fuzz Club)
– Dreaming Daisy (Official Video) (youtube.com)
