Children Collide
Theory of Everything
Universal
When you think about it, what better location is there than Melbourne for a grunge revival.
Echoing the dirty, clouded-over winters of its northern hemisphere counterpart, Seattle, our city has the beautifully decrepit warehouses of the industrial areas and streets littered with art that thrives on the shifting sands of a city dually torn between trying to modernise and preserve in equal measures.
Into this contemporary vision of the past come Children Collide, a band you can’t quite pigeon-hole with the nu-grunge tag. Sure some of the hallmarks are there — aggression and a dirty, garage mix of punk and rock sensibilities — and if ever a band echoed the unpredictable live presence of Nirvana it is them. But they add something that others of their ilk lack. Firstly they’re not a particularly disillusioned or depressive band and secondly they seem more acutely aware of the pop elements of bands like Sound Garden that their peers tend to ignore. Whether it’s concious or not, frontman Johnny Mackay seems irrepressibly drawn to crafting catchy tunes that just happen to be played aggressively, with a punk-rock backline made up of bass player Heath Crawley and drummer Ryan Caesar.
Tackling the difficult second album with the broad title Theory of Everything, the band ironically manages to give itself a tighter focus. Theory of Everything is not so much an attempt to sum up everything, as it is a testament to the album’s examination of the broad concepts that would entail. The album has a strong emphasis on Mackay’s fascination with the intersecting worlds of science and the supernatural (a customised tarot card comes with each album) as espoused at key points on the last album. Case in point, opening track ‘Future Monks’, which sets the tone for the rest of the album, casts Mackay as a strange hybrid science fiction writer or prophet: “Gather all the future monks, whisper the meeting point / We’re gonna rip holes in the universe.”
It’s a perfect opener, progressing expertly from the first album before leading into the layered high of first single ‘Jellylegs’. Musically, it isn’t all electrifying pace and rhythm, either, with the dour ‘Loveless’ being the strongest example of the band’s ability to break away. Gone are the more twisted jam-ladden ramblings and screams of the band’s early EPs, replaced with a more cohesive, melodic structure. Although Crawley perhaps doesn’t get as much of a chance to stand out as he did on the last album, he adds his distinctive style to the ‘loud, quiet, loud’ aesthetic of ‘Complacency No Vacancy’ and remains a solid presence throughout the rest of the album.
The band has expressed that this album is an attempt to better capture its live presence, and there is certainly a real sense of immediacy here. Theory of Everything may not hold all the answers, but whether you’re after a contemplative examination of the universe, some catchy pop tunes or just something to mosh to, it’s a good place to start.
