Lower Plenty - Hard Rubbish

‘Hard Rubbish’ is a quietly devastating album. Created by a collective of local heroes in the Melbourne music scene known as Lower Plenty, it was originally conceived around a kitchen table with what sounds like actual hard rubbish, i.e. junkyard-quality acoustic guitars, tinny drums and the occasional smog of polluted electronic noise. The band then used these dirty/pretty things to extract their own (very septic) emotional waste and leave it out in the universe for someone else to collect. The resulting scrap heap is a mixture of time-ravaged personal effects, disfigured emotions, and faded Polaroids of painful life events.

Described as ‘suburban country’, ‘Hard Rubbish’ is indeed meant to be heard while sitting on the floors of darkened rooms in empty houses, or long drives out the city, not sure whether you will return. It’s folksy without being twee and cutesy and it’s mournful without being hokey or caricature. The songs generally languish in their hollow confines, where hypnotically repetitive guitar plucks and scratching brush strokes churn in feelings of disappointment, denial and deep depression. The sad sway of ‘Strange Beast’ resurrects the ghosts of 1950’s samba, creating a haunting picture of romance between a person and the feeling of loneliness. The painful ruminations of ‘Nullarbor’ are mirrored in the bone-dry guitars that sound like a sandy breeze rolling over a huge, desertous expanse. The disturbing rumble of ‘Dirty Flowers’ teeters on the precipice of complete destruction, as the electronic dust storm of noise gradually swallows the foreboding guitar strums, which are fighting to get out. However, of the many gorgeous finds here, ‘Close Enough’ is the saddest curiosity of all. Self-assuredness corrodes into crippling regret right in your very ears, as vocalist Sarah Heyward pines “in my mind you had no leg to stand on.” It is the sound of experiencing overwhelming devastation upon the realisation of having made a huge mistake and it is utterly heartbreaking.

‘Hard Rubbish’ is an intensely personal collection of pain and wretchedness that will ignite your most voyeuristic urges. The feelings of morbid fascination and sometimes horror become addictive as you flick through the songs like someone’s discarded belongings. Your imagination will tick over with rich, hypothetical stories about the objects’ former owners and the sad stories behind them. You’ll come across both seemingly self-explanatory clues and more esoteric ones, which taunt you with their mysteries, and you will lose sense of time and reality as you wade through the debris. This album will absolutely floor you if given the chance.