The Smith Street BandDon’t Waste Your Anger

It’s rare a band could get progressively better with every release, and yet The Smith Street Band stand an example of just that– in their fifth album, Don’t Waste Your Anger, the Melbourne rock band have compiled a wonderful refrain about everything and nothing, with sentiments to soothe the soul and a soundtrack that’s pacifying and sage and at times, too clever for its own good.

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Weaving delicate, universal stories that flit between everything from heartbreak to society, changes to decisions, The Smith Street Band have a wonderfully indiscernible way of capturing ugly situations and finding a way to remake them as beautiful through music.

This is a shrug of the shoulder kind of album, in that the overriding conclusion The Smith Street Band seem to ask you to draw from their stories is that life is a very ‘come what may’ kind of arrangement. And indeed, come what may, The Smith Street Band know how to write a damn good set of songs.

Don’t Waste Your Anger is an incredibly emotionally complex release and indeed, attempting to put your thinking cap on to unwind this offering is a complex job.

Crooning the words, I’ve fallen out of love with people, over and over again, a dreamlike melody floating beneath that chant, Dirty Water creates a state of perplexing brilliance that renders a seemingly simple song incredibly complex with every listen–and the rest of the album follows suit.

Credit to bassist Michael “Fitzy” Fitzgerald who undertook recording and mixing duties on this release–a sterling job, sir! To be able to capture each delicate nuance of every instrument and balance them in such a way that nothing is exposed except a bittersweet undercurrent of complex feelings and misgivings is truly an art in itself.

Don’t Waste Your Anger is an incredibly emotionally complex release and indeed, attempting to put your thinking cap on to unwind this offering is a complex job. In fact, the more you play this release, trying to uncover every secret little creative distinction upholding the seemingly repetitive nature of the lyrics and themes, the more you find the album is in fact as far from repetitive as it gets. With every listen there’s a new perspective to enjoy it from.

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