On their debut album Bad//Dreems have taken the spirit of the Australian underground of decades past and the isolation of living in a small rural town and made it sound very familiar to this city living kid.
Right from its you just know this album is going to be a keeper; packed with tales of love, nostalgia and loneliness making it easy to relate to, but it’s the tongue in cheek, critical looks at Australian culture that make this album stand out. Dogs At Bay is a love letter to everything Australiana. It is also half an hour of shouting and air drumming for sure.
For their debut album, Bad//Dreems, the country’s best (and only?) purveyors of “outsider rock” worked with legendary producer Mark Opitz (The Angels, AC/DC, Cold Chisel), updating the “Oz Rock” template of working-class romanticism for a whole new generation. For the most part it’s thematically kept within arms-length, with vocalist Ben Marwe wearing his heart on the non-existent sleeves of his blue Chesty Bonds. An approach of front-foot assertiveness adapted equally for heartache (“used to love her, now it’s fucked”) and hatred (“you’ll never take me, ya dog”), with his guttural vocals slicing through the slickness of the stadium-ready production. Quintessentially Australian without any shades of cultural cringe.
The Fat Angel Sings 