EP Review: King Sweeties – We Are The Bosses

King Sweeties – We Are The Bosses
(Independent)

Reviewed by Tim Gruar.

Recently, Bic Runga and Kody Neilson emerged out of their Covid-enforced hibernation to tour the country. Part of their warm-up act was King Sweeties, a bedroom/home studio project between Bic and bassist extraordinaire Cass Basil (Tiny Ruins), with plenty of input from Nielson. The vocals are mainly done by Basil, with Runga on drums and running the desk. All recorded and mixed at Nielson and Runga’s home studio, the Box. They are in control – hence the title.

From the get-go you can tell this is not the usual Bic Runga vocal led affair. In fact, if you close your eyes, and ignore the label you could be forgiven in thinking you’d accidently stumbled across some strange mash-up of Shonen Knife, The Flaming Lips and Devo.

With Basil’s saccharine sweet vocals and robotic vocal delivery there’s a deliberately Japanese killer robot vibe going on in the title track to this ep. Perhaps there is a nod to the two women taking over the creative controls, but the song’s bizarrely sparse lyrics don’t really give away any clues: “We are the Bosses/Heavy Sunglasses …Champagne Glasses, Cheshire grinning/we collect the winnings”. Huh? It has a nice plodding bass, and some disturbing, haunting echo effects riding over the top but no real structure. It’s just a bit of a jam with no real direction.

‘Lydia’ is also a bit of a loose end. Full of knob twiddling space dust and cute synth effects. Another simple ditty with blurry vocals and an oddly place tempo change where the bridge should be. That change appears as if the channel was accidently switched and seems clunky and awkward. The mood slows down, and drifts indulgently, then returns to the original track. A nice idea, rendered badly, I fear. Or perhaps a bad edit, or an intentional producer joke?

“Let’s Just Stay In Bed” – finally something with a bit more substance to it. More trill vocals and a theme – a shyness to leave the house, avoid parties, remain reclusive. Given the recent pandemic, it seems like good advice. This tune also has a sort of 80’s meets-K-pop aesthetic, especially with the dinky-di keyboards. The accompanying video made by Auckland illustrator Frances Haszard, who’s also made videos for Lawrence Arabia and Julien Dyne is very cool. Simple colourful link drawings morphing into various surrealist shapes remind me of New Plymouth sculpture and pioneer film artist Len Lye’s work.

The there’s a bit of semi-punk with the pogoing rhythm of “Tonight We Could Go Out Dancing (As If It’s The Last)”. If there is any trainspotting to be done, it’s here, with this one being as close to a Mint Chicks track as you can get – circa ‘’Crazy? Yes. Dumb? No.” Its awkward, angular and jerky. All the things that the Nielson brothers do well. So why is it so prominent here? Who are the bosses, really?

By now, you get the feeling that this is not really a serious project. A bit of fun, some half-baked ideas stitched together and recorded for posterity. And that’s totally fine. But in some ways, I wished they’d held back and worked these songs into something more substantial. The final song “Who Wouldn’t Want To Be In Love” has a beautiful dreamy, yet epic quality. It promises to spiral off on some wild and imaginative musical tangent. But only 1.59 minutes in it just stops, without any rational explanation. All the songs on this ep are short, clocking barely over two minutes. Only one, ‘Lydia’, breaks three minutes. It’s great that Basil and Runga have come together. I really like what they’ve made. I just felt a bit let down by the briefness of it all.

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