The Brag

Leader Cheetah
Lotus Skies
Spunk Records/ EMI
***1/2
Leader Cheetah’s formula is nothing new. Neil Young laid its bones out nearly 40 years ago, and countless acts have used it since as a skin for lesser songs than his. Dan Crannitch’s voice does sound a little like Young’s initially, but close inspection betrays a gravity and empathy that’s all his own. It’s his remarkable vocal presence, matched with the band’s unsettling talent for tidy, compelling pop songs, that makes Leader Cheetah such an alluring proposition.

This is their second album, and the startling clarity with which it was laid to tape implies the jaundiced glare of their major label supervisors. This newfound sonic detail may be a calculated move on EMI’s part to groom the Adelaide band as the next antipodean list-topping classic rock emulation, but really, it’s a logical progression from the group’s delightfully rangy debut. What stops Lotus Skies from standing as the stellar sophomore it aspires to be is the transparency of its generic references. Some of these ideas transcend their stylistic appropriations; others don’t.

Opener ‘Midnight Headlights’ is stunning, in spite of its allusions. Lilting strings usher in a deliciously mellow stop/start verse, before a disarmingly beautiful chorus. First single ‘Crawling Up A Landslide’ is a sublime piece of songwriting that is unlikely to leave your head for weeks. On title track ‘Lotus Skies’, however, the band ditch Crazy Horse for Calexico; a trilling trumpet report leads into tepid indie-flamenco. Elsewhere, ‘Our Love’ aims for an anthemic rock rollick, but falls short of making us feel the lyric, “Our love is a light that’s just begun”.

A good album by a superb band, from whom we can still expect great things.

Luke Telford