Little Red exploded onto the JJJ Aussie indie scene with their debut album ‘Listen To Little Red‘ in 2008, following their very fine debut EP ‘Get Ready!’ in 2005. This was the kind of grass roots Australian band makes good story that the rock and indie scene loves. Sophisticated enough to have broad appeal but local enough to appeal on a personal level and reflective of a very Melbourne phenomenon that has produced a brief, joyous, meteoric rise to fame for these bands before they disappear equally quickly. Think Things Of Stone And Wood, Frente! and The Badloves. The big exception is Crowded House who produced a similar style of music based out of Melbourne that we all know of course lasted a long time and became musical legend.

That style is a little but pop, a little bit rock, with a distinctive indie bent reflected in organic, real musicianship and people singing songs about real emotions and real people with a folksy social and cultural spin. ‘Rock It‘ was the no.2 song on the 2010 JJJ Hottest 100 and similarly to 2004 Hottest 100 chart topper ‘Take Me Out‘ by Franz Ferdinand, it’s an interesting mix, both celebratory party song and serious, quite surprisingly deep take on the psychological politics of romantic desire, identity and direction when you’re young. ‘Rock It’ does that masterfully well with some lyrics in the chorus that sound like whimsical hedonism, talking about wanting to rock it all night long and finding the means to lose their minds they’ve been waiting for on the one hand.

On the other, there are some really quite touching and beautiful lyrics that get their point through really well, saying that when it’s all said and done, no-one really knows where they’re going and are searching for direction when they’re young and to live and enjoy the moment when you’re young because soon these good times will be gone. The songs’s message therefore, is to celebrate and go wild occasionally when you’re young and enjoy the beginnings of your adult life, even if you don’t know who you are or where you’re going yet and you may be a little scared and confused. To anyone who’s lived through that or is doing so, it really rings true and does so with both joyful and touching, poignant effect. Little Red also seem like the natural successors to New Zealand group Evermore with their gorgeous 2004 indie rock smash, ‘It’s Too Late‘.

There is an interesting combination of influences in Little Red if you listen to their body of work. You can hear a bit of similar gritty-but-cultured urban poets The Whitlams, parallels to Franz Ferdinand although Little Red are less abrasive, The Charlatans, similar home grown flash-in-the-pan Melbourne indie darlings Rail and Blur in this and other songs. In others you can hear The Easybeats, Beach Boys, The Kinks and even 50’s doo-wop which is really bizarre for quite a contemporary band. Oscillating between a contemporary British and Australian indie pop-rock sound and 50’s and 60’s retro pop. It is really quite surprising but that originality and such contrasts create a real freshness. Little Red were a moment, brief but very special in distinctly Melbourne, Australia organic indie pop-rock between 2008-10. Their triumphant moment was their debut album but ‘Rock It’ was their biggest anthem and a rousing tribute to the joys and pitfalls of youth.