Garageland - Do What You Want

****

(Flying Nun)

Russell Baillie

Back from some considerable growing up in public Upover, Auckland-born Garageland arrive at a second album showing their way with a curly guitar hook is even more barbed and that they're a chunkier-sounding outfit all round.

Their 1996 debut, Last Exit to Garageland, had its fizzy naive charms, but offered little beyond the early singles which first won them a local audience. Do What You Want, on the other hand, powers along with a stroppy confidence throughout.

True, the occasional Pavement and Pixies influence (like on opener Love Song) can still poke forth from the speakers, and their occasional let's-just-stay-on-this-chord-pattern approach can make the one or two songs sound a mite pedestrian among their craftier company.

But the frontline of Jeremy Eade's acerbic delivery and guitarist Andrew Claridge's fuzzy bravado makes much of Do What You Want a giddy treat.

That's especially so of You Will Never Cry Again (with its apache beat, droning REM guitars and a keening vocal tune that could be Paul Kelly); the sunny skip of Kiss It All Goodbye (however tempting it is to sing Angel is a Centrefold along to its jaunty chorus); or the mix of on/off decibels and swagger of What You Going to Do and Burning Bridges.

There are oddball treats too, like the ballad Get Even, with its Tom (Television) Verlaine-style wiry guitar, as well as the psychedelic country-ish Middle of Evening, which brings the album to a sweetly unsettling end.

And in the end Do What You Want makes for a nice combo - brash enough to withstand any accusations of maturity but song-smart enough to last. HHHH