Sunday Arts Magazine

Melbourne duo In Capital release their second full length album, Fridays withCarol. Fridays With Carol is a prismatic blend of 80s pop/new wave and indie rock influences, with moments of mad energy and pure joy, from Melbourne duo In Capital.With the first line of ascendant synth,In Capital transport us through a tear in time to a nostalgic world where Tears for Fears, The War on Drugs and LCD Sound system are refracted in a crystal maze. The album is a breathless and breath-taking ten-track flow of pop chimeras: familiar elements assembled into new and exciting forms where everything shimmers.Cameron Ford and Nick Jenkin write, record, produce, mix and release everything themselves, which gives them the freedom to make the kind of music they love.Friendship and hope saturate every hook, beat and cascade of keys onFridays withCarol, recorded over two years in the pockets of freedom during the world’s longest lockdown.The album’s first single ‘Dr. Mann’s Disco Plan’ is a dance floor-filling dose of the medicine we all need. Dr. Mann swaggers in with a growl before a soul/pop riff clears the way for a sublime confection of disco beats, club piano, sax, a bit of Bowie, TheB-52s, and some ‘ooh-la-lahs’ for good measure. It’s like something much-loved but only half-remembered from a long-lost mixtape.The style is an evolution of the electronic sound on their first LP,Human Is(2018). ‘We let the songs be what they wanted to be,’Nick says. ‘That ethos led to a more pared-back sound. We even pressed rough cuts, throwing away ‘perfection ’for a moment in time that couldn’t be replicated.’Case in point: ‘Studio Blues’is the distillation of 2am finishes, ragged end of party energy, and general good times. It’s one part jam session, two parts revival meeting replete with organs and claps, and three parts scotch.‘I’m just feeling my way through this life/ and I found a beat and a pace that suits me just fine’, Cam sings like a tunefulDylan doing Marvin Gaye, or Lou Reed putting on Barry White.Between the certified bangers you’ll also find indie-rock full of sparkling guitars and high-aerobic 80s drum machines (‘Brightly’) or honeyed sax that pools like the sunlight in the middle of an empty street (‘Everything I Need’).

For a change of pace, ‘You ’is a stunning synth-scape about distance and disconnection; a showcase of Nick’s sublime production which sounds like a city levitating under an electric moon.‘Roland Garros’ begins the album’s euphoric run to the end. It’s an irresistible blend ofPrince,Daft Punk, and early 90s club/dance elements:at its heart is the clamour of desire to get back in the middle of a high, sweating crowd with our hands in the air.The majestic finale, ‘Bell Jar’, climbs to its feet through an orchestra of cellos, chants and marching drums, then opens-out the future with a rhapsodic shout:‘One more step and we’ll know our son.’‘Making this album was cathartic,’Cam says. ‘It’s been something to care about and obsess over while everything happening around us was out of our control.’Fridays with Carol” has a lightness that allows us to escape.Each song is utterly unique, yet they all hang together like charms on a bracelet, every track an alternate world where there are colours, brighter than our own, lit by different sun