- That mercurial Melbourne duo Big Scary are back with what amounts to their debut full-length, Vacation. In the short time that we've known them, guitarist Tom Iansek and drummer Jo Syme have developed a reputation for utter unpredictably. From their origins in quiet and sweet folk to their outbursts of rocking and rolling topped off with an unexpectedly Jeff Buckley sounding melodrama and everything in between. I've heard dance remixes too, so, really I had no idea what to expect here and on that score Big Scary hardly disappoint. That rather widely heard single Mix Tape with its anthemic chorus introduces an indie-pop, bitter-sweet quality to the indie-rock we already knew they could do. The next single Gladiator brings even more rocking and rolling and another, equally anthemic chorus. The quirky poppiness seems to be the major addition to what is a generally rockier record - which seems like a more marketable sound for Big Scary. The way they describe their recording process sounds like they make a lot of what they do up on the fly - gathering what instruments and equipment they have around them and then it's ... wherever the day takes them. It's easy to imagine their collaboration with producer and former Yves Klein Blue member Sean Cook subjecting a similar influence on them and that would be an easy explanation for the new direction in the sound. I don't mean that as a criticism, Big Scary just seem uncommonly adaptable to circumstance - whatever that might be. By the way, those thinking they'd be denied the Big Scary that produced quiet, sweet and sad folk music that we'd get a little dose of, every few months, last year - don't fret (and believe me I was fretting), the second half of the album is almost entirely devoted to just that kind of introspective sound. Vacation turns out to be an extremely well-balanced record which has quite a lot to please all comers and takes Big Scary a long way in the process. Tom & Jo appear to want to quite closely micro-manage the oncoming fame, too, having just minted their own label Pieater, per purpose. Well, I doubt that Gladiator will be the last single off the album, but I'm not quite sure what the next one will be: perhaps the quirky and rhythmic Purple or the piano-anthem Falling Away? I'm not the right person to ask - I'd just play you one of those slow and moody numbers from up the end if I didn't think it was hopelessly self-indulgent of me. If you haven't heard it too many times Mix Tape is a bit of a winner and it has a nice little video, too. Enjoy and then prepare to be blind-sided by whatever it is that Big Scary do next.