#cuticles

Cuticles’ four members have been in other Antipodean bands, which I don’t know but you may be better informed. One guitarist, Matthew Plunkett, was in Trendees, while the other, Lisa Preston, did time in Nux Vomica and the Portage. Add a bass player, a drummer and the most rudimentary of recording equipment, and voila, Major Works.

The big radio hit might be “Cheese in My Brain,” a song that slouches to oblivion like a Television Personalities tune falling over its own feet, or the Swell Maps after a 100-hour dance marathon. It’s a pop song that’s taken a hit to the head and wobbles dangerously from side to side. Plunkett sings the chorus (about cheese in his brain, if you were wondering) in his brash, what-are-you-staring-at tenor, while Preston joins in at the giddy climaxes. You could sing along if you were so inclined, though you’d want to watch the shrapnel spraying out of detuned guitar strings.

Plunkett writes most of the songs, some of them premeditated, others plucked out of the air with the tape running, but Preston contributed a few, including “Rabbit Fur Lined Leather Glove” with its woozy Peter Gunn bass line. She’s a presence, to be sure, with her dead-eyed chants and shrieking dissonances. The guitars fritz out in wild bent arcs here, as the song chugs on towards the far distance.

Once in a while, things die down a little, and you can see the outlines of personal, even slightly vulnerable indie fuzz, as in the stately “Afterlife” where the guitar clangor turns grand and architectural and Plunkett’s howl goes somewhere almost anthemic. Here’s a band that’s still fumbling towards its great, definitive song, the one that slots into the limbic system in a Cuticles-sized hole and stays there forever more. Meanwhile, they’re making a wonderful racket with all sorts of potential, and that in itself is worth the ride.