Nice Biscuit - SOS Review
The weird and wonderful Nice Biscuit, return to the psychedelic-rock scene with their latest hypnotic album in tow.
Since their debut LP in 2018, the band have grown steadily into a beloved industry favourite, producing perfectly synchronized harmonies that pair with their fairytale attitude and ‘world-of-their-own-making’ rhythms. Influenced by kraut-rock, garage, modern psych, and folk/country music, the Australian quintet continue on-and-on to develop their already established, celebrated sound with SOS. Finding peace with the enchanting vocals of the two front-women, Billie Star and Grace Cuell, this release is to be seen as a swaying life-raft amongst the vicious seas of the world. The constant dread of being hit by rogue-waves of information, sorrow after tragedy, can lead anyone towards overwhelming apathy. This album is less a relief from the woe and more a collected response, one song at a time, to fight the bitterness that they’ve felt.
Their title track, SOS, is, totally objectively, their best work. Looping vocals exact themselves completely with a hypnotic vision, swaying alongside distorted beats. Transcending this, the fuzzy guitar sits atop the repetitive wave-like soft crashing of the snare and drumbeat; all of which combine to form the image of a distant ship calling out back to shore bathed in the consistant orange light from a faraway lighthouse. The next track, Rain, separated itself from this picture almost entirely. First released as a single, Rain sings of the anxiety and impact of recent climate catastrophes. Written first after the intense bushfire season in the summer of 2019 & ’20, the long period of drought, and finally the massive flooding that followed in Brisbane in 2022, this song “speaks to the sensation of being thrown around by the weather like a rag doll, with no certainty of a safe or soft landing”, as the band said in an interview with magazine founder Eliot Odgers.
One of the later tracks in the album, Fade Away, stands out by representing that same striking image the band themselves put forward throughout the album. Sonically striking and reminiscent of a dip into a more shoegazey sound, this piece encapsulates the visual calamity of the world crumbling around you. Juxtaposed with what seems to be it’s total opposite, the next track Breathe returns to the psychedelic trance-like state that the group found within themselves back in previous works such as their last EP Create Simulate. The vocals on this final track are particularly reminiscent of pieces by 90’s rock band Ocean Colour Scene, only with a backing track that could’ve been taken fresh from some old masterwork by Boards of Canada. All this combines to produce a sound that should be more at home in some kind of space-age conversation pit or mushroom trip.
This whole album is a pure and wholesome expansion on the addictive discography of Nice Biscuit. Made with attention to detail by a group of people who haven’t just mastered the use of their instruments, but show clear love for the genre with which they contribute to wholeheartedly.