LISTEN: The Shiny Brights – ‘Deep Blue Sea’

When you Google ‘the Shiny Brights’, you get an odd assortment of links to both music and laundry websites. Turns out that’s because this Adelaide five piece named themselves after their local laundromat, in honour of the fact that their rehearsal space is stuffed full of white goods.

The Shiny Brights first made an appearance in 2008 with debut EP, Let’s Not and Say We Did. They got a whole lot of Triple J love and went on to play the Big Day Out, Parklife and Fuse festivals amongst others, and were handpicked to perform at the Great Escape Festival in Brighton. They also toured with talent like You Am I, The Vines and The Grates. The band put out their Too Many Chiefs EP in 2010, but then went mysteriously quiet – apart from a handful of singles released over the course of 2011-12.

Late last year drummer Miles ‘Buns’ Wilson took to the band’s blog to clarify (in a rambling post that covered his parking fines, his grandma’s cat and what he had for lunch) that, contrary to rumour, the Shiny Brights were not breaking up. They had in fact been busy in the studio with Gerling‘s Darren Cross, coming up with new offering ‘Deep Blue Sea’.

The hiatus seems to have worked wonders – ‘Deep Blue Sea’ is a refreshing new direction for the band. Their earlier stuff was fine, but it just didn’t cut it for me. Their new single, however, is ridiculously catchy – with a breezy riff and a bass line that’s up there with the work of The Lucksmiths‘ brilliant Mark Monnone. All five Shiny Brights join together to bawl out the lyrics, which have an ambivalent slant that belies the song’s cheerful vibe. “I was out in the cold watching the rain / I was out of my mind, out of control / deep blue sea, devil and me,” they shout, invoking a saying that’s haunted pop music since at least 1931.

The Shiny Brights have some more stuff coming out this year, so keep your wits about you.

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