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DAILY REVIEW RATING:

Melbourne band Twerps have been on a steady ascendancy since forming in 2008.

A string of EPs and singles has given them a dedicated fan base, both at home and abroad. The band are signed to Merge Records in America and had the chance to tour with alternative darlings Real Estate across North America. Add to this a support slot with Mac Demarco around Australia, as well as a couple of plum festival spots at the Meredith in 2012, St Jerome’s Laneway festival in 2013 and the upcoming Golden Plains festival, and the hard work has expanded the breadth of Twerps’ fan base.

Its international impact might be summed up by the fact that it was a guy from Indiana who adamantly led me to the band. He sends me updates on every gig they play in Melbourne, asking if I’ve been and he’s despondent if the answer is ‘no’.

But the band’s slow burning success seems to have taken its toll.

Singer-guitarist Julia McFarlane, quoted in the album’s marketing material, explains: “The title Range Anxiety is both descriptive and comic. The album at times feels like it was built on uncertainties; some purely practical and some emotional obstacles were present around the start of writing”.

Since their first album dropped in 2011 they’ve had a lineup change — Alex MacFarlane has taken up the sticks, replacing original drummer Patrick O’Neill who left in 2013.

The follow-up to the acclaimed 2011 self-titled debut album is more of their tried and tested formula –a brand of jangly lo-fi rock , easy on the ear and chock-full of delicious melodies.

They’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here. LIke pretty much every other Australian rock band at he moment, their sound can be traced through to a retro rock revival. However, while many others seem to be indebted to the pub rockers of the late ’60s and 70s, Twerps draw upon the alternative jangle pop bands of the ’80s and early ’90s. Twerps’ sound is often compared to The Go-Betweens, while other Aussie references can easily be made to ’60s pop rockers The Loved Ones and even The Easybeats.

It’s by no means a beat solely tread by Twerps; Londoners Yuck and Americans Girls and Real Estate mined this particular vein of retro to great acclaim, and upstart Queenslanders The Creases are now enjoying a swell of success on its back too.

After an organ drenched atmospheric intro, I Don’t Mind kicks the album off with a fantastic,  slow-building and honest love song; “Let’s put the puzzle back together our way/It’s yours and mine”.

The lead single Back to You is a catchy rocker displaying the band’s keen ear for a pop melody hook. It displays the beautiful back and forth of lead and rhythm guitar parts which underpins most of Twerps’ songs.

The record’s sweetest and most beautiful moment is its penultimate track, Love at First Sight. It’s a tender ode to a young Peruvian girl, spotted twirling across a room whom the narrator becomes instantly taken with. The notion of ‘love at first sight’ is often a clichéd romantic vision, but with singer Marty Frawley’s halting, pained vocals you can never be sure if this image of love really is a reciprocal infatuation.

Unrequited love and unsettling obsession is further mined on album’s closer Empty Road, a somewhat creepy tale of stalking a drunk woman as she walks home from a party.

Range Anxiety is a good album, filled with some great songs. The simple and often melancholic tendencies of the lyrics have a universality to them, making them both intimate and accessible.

However, the quality of the song writing does drift, particularly towards the back half of the record. A couple too many songs dispense with the up-tempo joy of earlier numbers and their simplistic, melodic charm begins to slightly wear thin.

But these are small gripes for when Range Anxiety hits on Twerps’ perfect mix of chime, charm and pop sensibilities they are beautiful, haunting  and emotive.(Beat Review)