Ball Park Music Puddinghead

Ball Park Music vocalist/guitarist Sam Cromack has a unique knack for crafting quirky lyrics that, upon further inspection, reveal a deeper, often sombre underbelly. Take, for instance, “Everything Is Shit Except My Friendship With You”, which begins with Cromack singing, “Satan’s dog is at the front door/I’m giving her a biscuit” before adding, “I can’t cope with a petty modern life”. Such sentiments are at odds with the band’s harmony-drenched indie-pop, or the robotic groove of “Error Playin’” boasting a choir of celestial voices in its chorus, while opener “She Only Loves Me When I’m There” (a fictional song about a turbulent relationship) finds Cromack and bassist Jennifer Boyce harmonising over a solid backbeat and some XTC-inspired riffing. To make the album, the Queensland quintet converted a home in North Brisbane into a studio and, for the first time in their career, self-produced, with the title Puddinghead (a Shakespearian reference to someone who messes up easy tasks) a nod to the trial and error of that process. It did, however, provide room for more experimentation, as evidenced by the vocoder-effected vocals that open the record, and the deep ’70s funk-disco that closes out “A Good Life is the Best Revenge”.