Just as you should never judge a book by its cover – supposedly – so perhaps you should never judge a band by its name. It’s sage advice, otherwise I’d have never even listened to this, the debut EP by The Great Emu War Casualties. It turns out there was a Great Emu War in Australia in 1932: a ‘wildlife management military operation,’ it was, in effect, a failed attempt at widespread culling. According to the press release, ‘the emus were too fast to be hit by the guns the army were using at the time. One report suggested that barely 50 out of thousands of Emu targets were killed.’ So, the casualties were few and far between: rare, even. It’s therefore a fitting name for a rather unusual band, who nudge away at the parameters of genre to create something interesting, different.
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‘Stir Fry and Sadness’ is a dreamy but downbeat, minor-chord swirl of a song with an expansive, echo-heavy neoprog / postrock mid-section ‘There is a God and His Name is Mark Sugar Mountain’ is every bit as noodly as the title implies, interweaving guitars carving nebulous latticeworks over bubbling synths. Final cut ‘The Rip Off’ is an eddying semi-ambient synth-led sliver of dream pop underpinned with a certain self-effacing humour amidst the introspective melancholy. It’s really rather good.
The Great Emu War Casualties Online
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