Chris Roper South African CD of the week
The first words that the gravelly-voiced Arno Carstens croons on the opening track of The Springbok Nude Girls’ new CD, Omnisofa (Sony Music), are “we’re going to grow you up slowly”.
It wouldn’t be too fanciful to imagine this as referring to the relationship between the band and its fans, as the Nude Girls embark on an increasingly experimental trajectory with their music. One might also think of the phrase as charting the remarkable development of South African rock music over the last few years.
We’re all so sick of slotting local music into the ghettoised category of a sub-genre of international music, but how else are we supposed to stake a claim for the necessity of concerted development, and signal the need to be allowed to develop an individual style not covered by the pressures of the global economy? This EP is a vindication of all the battles fought by all those great musicians who were destined to never quite make it out of the mire of local apathy.
Blue Eyes is a remarkable song, encapsulating that blend of subtlety and power that makes the Nude Girls the great band that they are. The slight distortion of Theo Crous’s guitar, the loping, hypnotic quality of Carstens’s always intelligent lyrics, the measured crescendos of Francois Kruger’s drums, and the overall completeness of the song’s progression, signal this as a candidate for song of the year.
The rest of Omnisofa is as much of a pleasure. The only false note is one of those silly hidden tracks, but on reflection even this is promising. It means that already satisfied fans can cherish the expectation of even further maturity in a band that’s already so damned good.