Artist: Coronet Blue Title: Coronet Blue Label: Laughing Outlaw File Under: Australian power-pop grunt RIYL: Echo & The Bunnymen, The Tea Party, The Smithereens Coronet Blue are a Sydney two-piece made up of John Rooney and Anthony Bautovich, the later having played in Ken Stringfellow's The Orange Humble Band among others. Their debut album is co-produced by Mitch Easter, he of such glories as REM's first three as well as Pavement, Susan Vega, Mr Stringfellow's various outfits and more. Australian readers will know him from The Hummingbird's great Love Buzz album. Easter plays all lead guitars here, and Coronet Blue is then a tight, well-driven collection of up-tempo pop rock with a nice dose of soul to boot. The up-tempo rhythms are offset by some dark and miserable lyrics. With titles like "Black Angel" and "No Faith No Heart", it's obvious all is not a Nikki Webster wonderland, and even when Rooney sings all perky-like "it always ends this way/ after passion/there's never much to say", you can tell there are no happy endings. "For Too Long a Secret" sees Mitch Easter's REM connections cast their spell, melodic vocals wrapped around backgrounded guitar slabs, and for a moment there's pop-meloncholy perfected, that little phrase that leaves singer, band and listener longing for something no-one's really sure about anyway. Coronet Blue has been re-released with five bonus tracks, which makes it good value for money as well as a space to display the band's obvious variety. Still, there's something not quite cohesive about the whole thing - maybe an album of ballads versus the darker, heavier material might have made more sense. As it stands, there's enough warm production value, Big Star jangly melodies and harmonic happiness despite, or to spite, the gloomy lyrics so fans of power-pop won't come to harm by sinking their fangs into this.