Goon Sax - Mirror Ii

Since forming in high school, Brisbane band The Goon Sax-the trio of Riley Jones, Louis Forster, and James Harrison, best friends who take turns writing, singing, and playing each instrument- have been celebrated for their unpretentious, kinetic homemade pop. Mirror ll, The Goon Sax's first album for Matador, is something else entirely: a new beginning, a multi-dimensional eclectic journey of musical craftsmanship that moves from disco to folk to no wave skronk with staggering cohesion. Gone are the first-person insecurities of their school days-they've been made expansive, more universal, more weird. Mirror II is intense, the sum of everything that has always made The Goon Sax great: robust sprechgesang, raw lyrical candor, ascending guitar pop structures that would make the most storied jangle bands blush, elevated into their newfound narra- tive verisimilitude and expanded sonic experimentations. Each member's idiosyncratic style comes across on record: Riley's bubblegum noise is more present than ever before, Louis' moody, super- natural avant-pop, and James' psychedelic folk.