The Goon Sax

★★★ Mirror II MATADOR. CD/DL/LP

Third album from Brisbane trio goes through the looking glass.

“We take on so many forms,” sings Louis Forster on In The Stone, a line that hints at the unsettled, unfixed nature of The Goon Sax’s first album since 2018’s We’re Not

Talking. With a pleasing lack of ingratiation, the all-singing trio – Riley Jones, James Harrison and Forster (son of Robert) – aren’t too worried whether those forms neatly obey the laws of geometry. Early Orange Juice and early Go-Betweens are both present in the terse but sensitive indie of In The Stone or The Chance, Desire channels House Of Love vibrations (and Jones’s Hope Sandoval slur) but there’s a waywardness to Temples or Caterpillars, as if they’re trying to catch Dave Fridmann production grandeur on a Fall budget. It’s like watching people chuck matches into a box of fireworks: sparks everywhere, but – excitingly, frustratingly – you’re never sure where they’re going to land.