Darker With The Day

This morning's episode features an in-studio interview with Juniper, from local trans punk band Queerbait.

Plus the following review, featured just before the Doris song, Fairfield.

Doris - Four Trees (Kitty Records)

Released June 7th, 2024

Doris hail from Newcastle and describe themselves as a “guitar band from NSW, Australia.” More specifically, their sound incorporates elements of mid-nineties post-hardcore, late-nineties emo and early screamo. Having released an EP, Birthday Cards, last year and a split single with Freezer earlier this year, Doris finally released their, eagerly awaited, debut album Four Trees on June 7th, via Kitty Records.

Four Trees is named after a row of trees that stand outside bassist and vocalist Bronte’s childhood home. In the group’s album statement, the trees provide a metaphor for both the immovable objects that observe the passage of time, as well as those who participate in it. It is a beautiful piece of writing that includes the following, “…We will become those trees, we will shift and we will move. Yet by each other’s sides we will stand tall, and strong, and we will grow without being alone.”

Musically, Four Trees is heavily indebted to groups such as Rites Of Spring, early Jawbreaker and those that later came out on Gravity and Ebullition Records. Noisy and discordant, but at the same time melodic, I cannot help but marvel at how seamlessly they would have fit into the emo scene of mid-2000s Brisbane, alongside acts like Quiet Steps, To The North and Epithets. 

Album opener, White Bull Terrier, starts with spoken-word vocals over an angular guitar riff and gradually builds into distorted chords and screamed vocals. Such is the formula for much of the record, with notable examples being I Want To Grow and Bookshop. This simplification of the group’s sound is not a slight. The pattern works, and Four Trees’ shifting dynamics and combination of honest and heartfelt songwriting is enough to maintain the listener’s attention for the duration of the record.

Where Four Trees really shines however, is when the group chooses to stray from this formula. Holster is eerily reminiscent of Slint’s Don, Aman, off their haunting masterwork, Spiderland, whilst Godmademespecial brings the album to an ethereal, if slightly unearthly, close. Personally though, the album’s high point is the nine-minute epic Fairfield, a sprawling song that combines all the aforementioned elements and why, in an era of heart-on-your-sleeve songwriting, Doris prove themselves to be truly exceptional. 

It seems fitting to return to the band’s album statement to conclude this review, to allow it to speak to its own intent, rather than permit myself, the reviewer, to obfuscate its message and ideas with my own opinions. “Four Trees is about learning to grow, it’s about accepting love into your life, it’s about never fearing who you were or who you will become. Consume this however you need to. It’s yours as much as it is ours.”

Nick Stephan