Album Review: Family Cactus Come Howling

Rating: * * * *

As a band on their first album and just the one local tour behind them, Wellington's Family Cactus haven't really spent a lot of time on the road.

Which is odd because so many of the 10 tracks on this assured debut album sure sound like they've been out on the highway for quite a while and they've got tales to tell because of it.

The feeling of travel permeates much of Come Howling. The songs of frontman Adam Ladley are both cinematic and melodramatic and his septet - most of whom have done time in other Wellington and Auckland indie outfits - shows a smart sense of dynamics, helping evoke wide horizons and the rhythms of the road.

They aren't exactly travelling into uncharted territory - the comparisons cited on their publicity, like Arcade Fire, Beirut, Radiohead and Springsteen, do tend to poke out now and then.

That's whether it's the Arcade Fire anthemics of opener Kingmaker or the very Beirut brassy waltz of the closing track A Giant Flash in the Pan.

But if they're wearing some of those influences on their sleeves, the songs still hold up care of Ladley's observational lyrical approach, all carried by some fine tunes.

Among them, are the slow-fused drift of In Transit which starts off in low-slung E Street band territory but ends up somewhere dreamy; likewise Coal Town is a grim portrait of a place which has seen better days with a chiming tune; and Mariachi Stomper neatly reef-knots its various jangling guitar lines into something quite fetching.

Elsewhere they can sound country-mode Phoenix Foundation on the title track and like the Finn brothers on the blackly-comedic acoustic ballad A Running Mystery.

Offsetting all the prevalent lush harmonies, they do kick up some dust and distortion on the lurching Barbed Tongue and there are even more noisy thrills on No Magic which, with its martial drums and qualling guitars, but dulcet singing, shows Family Cactus are a band with a very sound engine and an even more impressive gearbox.

And with a few more miles on the clock, they may well prove unbeatable.