My Own Pet Radio – Unidentified Flying Collection of Awesome (Mucho Bravado)

If you’re familiar with Ball Park Music, tune out for a bit.

If you’re not, well, Sam Cromack makes jangly, slightly off-kilter, overly self-concious and highly infectious pop tunes with his band mates in BPM. With My Own Pet Radio, he makes jangly, slightly off-kilter, overly– well you get the point. It’s the same aesthetic. In fact, I don’t really know why this isn’t a Ball Park Music album, but this sort of thing happens all the time and I’m going to write it off as one of the great mysteries of life.

Unidentified Flying Collection Of Songs works really well as a distinct entity. Put it on and leave it on, because there’s enough variety to fill up 34.1 minutes without feeling oversaturated. Lazy, low-fi slacker track ‘Altamont Speedwa’y doesn’t jostle unpleasantly with the more MOR pop of ‘I Am Having Such A Good Time’, nor do either seem out of place with the heart-strung ‘Fourteen Pianos And A Horse Jawbone’ (incidentally, these are the obvious single-worthy tracks, though they do seem richer for having such lovely neighbours).

Regular short interludes lead one style of song into another to ease genre-jarring, but they provide enough narcotic-tinged interest to stand on their own; if this was an album full of odd noisy experimental interludes, it might not be so bad either.

The best thing about Sam Cromack? He doesn’t sound like everybody else. Influences stand behind his shoulder without imposing; he borrows and appropriates and makes something – dare I say it – fresh. His earnestness is irresistibly charming and while the childlike innocence might seem a little contrived, the music itself is anything but.

Don’t believe me? You can check out pretty much the whole thing. Pretty sure bandcamp rocks my cotton socks.

by Jodi Biddle

Jodi is a mild mannered technical writer by day but by night, she stalks the streets of Brisbane looking for unsuspecting musical prey to DEVOUR WHOLE.