I hadn't encountered the byline Kelvin Hayes before. Here he is, effusing over Do-Re-Mi's Domestic Harmony:
A record of sturdy resonance which keeps faith with their indie roots and tittered on the verging mega-sales, which in the end never came. Nestling between Dorland Bray's punchy drumming, Stephan Philip's nifty guitar hooks, and Helen Carter's wonderful bass work lies one of Australia's finest if not the world's most powerful female voices -- Deborah Conway. Domestic is indeed just that in sound and lyric. "Theme From Uncle Jim" sounds a little tawdry now but it's followed by some of the best examples of Aussie rock from that period; "After the Volcano" and "Idiot Grin" both exude a fresh jangly guitar sound married to rock prowess. The result resides somewhere between the Church and INXS. Their biggest hit, "Man Overboard," features the words "penis envy," which got it banned in the U.K. More startling -- it isn't even the best track. Further wonderment and for those seeking an altogether Aussie sound should hear "New Tabboos" and "1000 Mouths"; great for air drumming also.
I think you could randomly replace all the adjectives and adverbs and it wouldn't be any worse. (A MadLib-proof piece of writing!) Never mind the utter emptiness of the description, if that's the word I'm groping for -- I have no idea what this band sounds like, other than "fresh [what?] jangly guitar sound" and "somewhere between the Church and Inxs", two bands with little in common other than being rock bands from Sydney -- what I want to know is, who is editing this? Erlewine can write -- most of Allmusic's writers aren't bad -- so how does this ineptitude pass? The first and last sentences alone should disqualify this piece for a high school newspaper: phrases like "tittered on the verging mega-sales" and "Further wonderment and for those seeking an altogether Aussie sound should hear" aren't just banal or dumb, they are broken.
RJ Johnson
The phrase "tittered on the verging mega-sales" I think was missing a noun such as "brink." Not that the addition of a noun would make it any more palatable; the shotgun wedding that joined "tittered" and "verging" guaranteed that their offspring would be drooling, slope-foreheaded clauses of remarkable freakishness. Our only hope was that said progeny would be stillborn. Sadly that was not the case and the remainder of the paragraph slouched ahead, draging its knuckles in the dirt and breathing hoarsely through its mouth until we can only ease its --and our-- burden and kill it mercifully by turning the page and averting our eyes.
Scraps
[Teetering into hand]
I titter at your virgin mega-sales
I was going to object to your saying that Erlewine can write (oh my God, I seriously just accidentally typed "right," who am I?), but then I looked around and discovered that, yes, he can, and the nonsense I had been thinking of was mostly written by Heather Phares. Reading through what she's written about the Throwing Muses (for example) will make you never, ever want to see the word "mercurial" again.
"Nestling between Dorland Bray’s punchy drumming, Stephan Philip’s nifty guitar hooks, and Helen Carter’s wonderful bass work lies one of Australia’s finest if not the world’s most powerful female voices..."
Pure poetry.
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