- Full Power Happy Hour is the debut self-titled album from the Brisbane four-piece, following their Fun EP from 2019. The record could be seen as part of a local revival of the jangly pop music that was once referred to as “the Brisbane sound”, following popular albums over the last couple of years from Dumb Things and The Double Happiness. Full Power Happy Hour are maybe a bit lighter on the jangly guitar than either of them, but there is a likeness in the laid back guitar pop and reflective personal lyrics.

Songs on the album touch on insecurities, friendship, loss, and a bit of the feminist personal-as-political. Heart Fell Out, meanwhile, adds a level of meta by being about what it’s like to share deeply personal lyrics in front of a crowd.

I first saw songwriter Alex Campbell, along with bass player Caroline Townsend, play in all-women punk band Gunk a decade ago. Inspired by the riot-grrrl movement a generation earlier, they had taken to heart its DIY manifesto – forming a band, organising gigs and writing a black and white photocopied zine called Slubs.

In the years since then, I’ve seen that Slubs zine run to over 30 issues and expand to a community radio show, and the two of them have played in a variety of other bands - including Caroline in one of Brisbane’s most popular indie groups The Mouldy Lovers. Listening to Full Power Happy Hour though took me back to seeing Gunk all those years ago.

The gentle indie pop is quite different from Gunk’s righteous punk racket, though a couple of the two chord riffs in songs on this record did remind me of their simple song structures. But really it was the differences rather than any similarities that brought them to mind. Most notable is the evolution in Alex’s singing from the Kathleen Hanna inspired screech of Gunk to the assured country croon of a song like Crying Over Stitches on this record. There is an experienced confidence to everything on this record, reflected in the fact it is being released on Coolin’ By Sound, an indie label with deep connections in the local music industry.

There is still a DIY sensibility to it though – in its simplicity and honesty; or that less experienced band member Finn Rodgers is credited with “tambourine, vocals and hype”. They still exude the joy of friends getting together to make art. But they also represent another element of a DIY creative community – that over a number of years it’s possible to see each others’ abilities and tastes grow and change, to note the shifts in perspective that are poured out on stage.

The DIY spirit of punk is great when it inspires kids to get up and thrash out their angst on stage, and I loved Gunk for it too. But that’s surely not all there is to it. Full Power Happy Hour’s stretching of musical abilities, their exploration of the external and internal world and how it changes over time, their continued presence in Brisbane’s independent music scene; is a triumph of the punk DIY spirit growing up and surviving intact.

- Andy Paine.