Waax: Holy Sick (Indie)

2:51 Holy Sick

Released: Now

- In little more than a year Brisbane hellions Waax have elbowed aside all other comers for the position of ‘it’ band in the city’s little, local scene. With all eyes on the shrieking Marie DeVita and her compadres, every set of them paying very close attention to the band and every little thing they do, the notion of this EP being a ‘surprise’ seems a little disingenuous, but despite that, it’s like a nice little snapshot of where the band are, a polaroid to stick on your fridge (er, in your Spotify playlist?) as they head out on tour and generate those brain-cell destroying, emotionally inflaming sometimes just life-endangering experiences that will -no doubt- be transmuted into the songs on a debut full-length.

Even if you hadn’t headed out to any of their live shows, the two numbers which bookend the Holy Sick EP would be familiar from their flogging on the radio. I For An Eye displays better than any other song the yelping and leaping athleticism of DeVita’s voice. With that distinctive vibrato it firmly puts Waax in place to intercept the legacy of The Grates’ Patience Hodgson. Interestingly, The Grates’ have got a lot louder as they’ve got older, partly because it’s finally OK to cut loose with ‘90’s guitar hooliganism again and partly because they just don’t give a damn any more. That’s just about the way Waax are playing it too: axes roaring as Marie shrieks in frustration about trying to be a woman in rock’n’roll. Wisdom Teeth, the first song Waax released as a single is even gutsier in the guitar department, grinding out the experience of a nasty hangover. It’s a bit unfair of me, but I kinda wish they could go even louder, take the forceful sweetness of Marie’s singing and put it against something so sludgy and stoner that the whole would threaten to break apart. It’s a personal preference and probably one I’m not going to get to indulge until the time Waax reach the same point in their career that The Grates are at now.

The newer offerings on the EP are something else altogether: CC Thugs is a mournful crooner about crappy emotions. It’s not really single territory but it does have something of the mournful power of Concrete Blonde. The EP’s title-track by contrast, though softer than both which came before it, is a custom-made single for damn sure. The discontent of the fierce chorus refrain: “Something’s not right here!” bonds with the anthemic riff in a way that works big time.

Waax are a thoroughly rocking unit and if you didn’t know it already, this EP will certainly prove it. The future promises big things, on which the enthusiastic anger of Holy Sick is only a down payment. I’m sure the band will be back shortly to bring the balance crashing down.

- Chris Cobcroft.