The Fat Angel Sings

Chapter Music’s website refers to the band Dick Diver as “Melbourne deep pop thinkers”, and it seems like such a perfect description. Their grasp on guitar-based indie-pop music is clearly deep; they often recall New Zealand’s Dunedin scene and the Go-Betweens and other melodic-guitar-pop bands of the past. That’s a starting place, but they keep going directions you don’t expect, from the sax solos to faux ‘60s rave-ups to crashing anthemic choruses to soft-rock moods to quiet grooves that unfold and then disappear. The “thinkers” word is incredibly important too – when I think of their approach to lyrics as “smart”, what I mean is that they alternate among being inscrutable, wry, emotional, biting, strange, straightforward and poetic. One song, “Waste the Alphabet”, was written with the help of an actual poet. So you know, that means they’re smart.