Body Type – Expired Candy Review

Spend enough time in the indie fields and eventually listeners can come across something as intensely fresh and exciting as Expired Candy. Confident momentum carries Body Type over their thirteen-track EP, a mixture of nostalgic tones of the early years of the genre movement but a neat spin on all those usual suspects. It could not get more energetic and well-paced than the gift of Holding On. Hold on to Expired Candy, obviously don’t eat anything past its sell-by date but give it a listen. Key differences and all that. Expired Candy is an exciting opportunity for Body Type to turn their approach toward the indie rocker crowds, the growing energy surrounding plucky and courageous artists means listeners love an underdog story. Body Type win their listeners over with an abundance of quality and fight against sweet suggestions in the small towns closing themselves off.  

Summer Forever does this best of all, the literal mentions of a little municipality caving into its own self-worth as a sickening little guitar riff flows under it all. Body Type is a meeting of so many moments in indie rock. Expired Candy is a real expansion on everything great to come from the genre over the last decade. As the mind begins to drift to this artist or that, it is worth remembering the Australian outfit is as genuine and musically stylish as it gets for the indie scene. Antithetical placements from lyrics and instrumentals, soon guided to a bitter saccharine indifference, a knowing power held confidently and with purpose by lead singer duties from Sophie McComish and Annabel Blackman. Expired Candy expects to impress nobody but the band, and in turn their self-assured style leads to appreciation elsewhere. Hear it over Weekend and lose yourself in it.   

Where Britain may be lighting bonfires under their big assets of indie music, Australia is not far behind them. Body Type and Boy & Bear are leading this charge, and rightly so. Expired Candy is a more than capable second record, and even if Tread Overhead feels as though people are stomping on upstairs, it is not long before Body Type find themselves leagues above those billed ahead. Don’t enjoy yourself too much, or do, Sha La La is hard not to find immediately catchy. Its guitar-oriented focus brings about a brief flicker of nostalgia for all those coming-of-age movies which feature such heavy efforts from indie bands, but Body Type sidesteps this feeling and comes through with a feeling far more unique than soundtrack filler. They are not The Coral.   

Expired Candy is neither out of date nor sweet, doing so would be a waste of a comparison which plays on the name of an album and nothing more. Droner rock and little swings of free-flowing charm flicker on knowingly. Constant creativity ebbs through Body Type’s second record, and picking those changes in mood and tone up is a real treat. Listen in and listen again. It is impossible to escape the clutches of such a quality record. Endurance test Miss The World hits out at the horrors of the real world and album high point Anti-Romancer brings it all back home. Thumping, heavy and consistent in its tone, Expired Candy is the perfect album to come of age with, from the sweet-mad up-and-comers to the stressed-out journalists moving homes and clinging to great music like this to keep sane when packing away Mental As Anything singles. Thanks, Body Type, another day survived through thanks to a wall of noise on Albion Park.