Top Albums of 2011 - No. 3

3.  No One Gets Lost Anymore – The Smith Street Band

This band was a recent discovery for me.  I saw them support Canadian hardcore band, Fucked Up, in November and was blown away by their energy.  Usually when you see support bands, they are either an ill fit, or they just don’t seem to have that intangible quality that makes them engaging.  Well, Melbourne’s own The Smith Street Band have that quality in spades.  Their music could probably be best described as punk; and to be clear, I’m talking the old The Clash style punk where the word “punk” fit the attitude, rather than the actual music.  To further their connection to the Melbourne punk scene, this album was also the very last album recorded at Melbourne’s Arthouse, the launching place for many well known Australian punk bands (sort of our own version of New York’s CBGBs).  The striking thing about this album is how refreshingly honest it is.  It seems to me that many musicians are trying to make music that is universal in order to appeal to as many people as possible, and as a result, their music becomes thin and emotionless.  Here, the lyrical content focuses solely on vocalist Wil Wagner’s journey through life in Melbourne’s inner suburbs.  He sings, specifically, about his experiences and leaves very little to chance (take, for example, The Belly of Your Bedroom where Wagner confesses, “And I know that I’m a liar / And I can’t fill your desires with a body that’s always going to let the both of us down”).  The benefit of this is that he manages to make a much greater emotional impact than other vocalists who try to be too broad and, therefore, wind up sing about nothing.  On top of this, Wagner delivers his vocals in a thick Australian accent.  While to many this may be off-putting, to me it furthers the honesty of the music.  How could he sing and be so open about himself and his life, and then try to hide behind an accent that he doesn’t use when talking to his friends in a bar?  Where many Australian bands seem to be too concerned with fitting in with the cool indie Triple J crowd, The Smith Street Band are doing it their own way and have come up with one of the best albums of 2011.  You can pick this one up at Poison City Records.