Bored Shorts’ pedigree is strong, with members being drawn from Sydney staples Big White, High-tails and Flower Truck. And when you hear them, this Venn diagram makes sense. But even though it’s easy to trace their sonic lineage, Bored Shorts sound fresh and urgent. And bored. But fresh.

That’s the tension at the heart of Bored Shorts’ music – it’s a collision of urgency with slacker resignation, and it’s what makes them so compelling.

Listen to single Day & Age and you’ll hear what I mean: confident melodies stumble into throw-away spoken-word by the line’s end; anxieties voiced in strained tenors are dismissed seconds later (but we know that doesn’t really exist/but it doesn’t really matter anyway); the guitars keep us suspended in uneasiness too, never giving in to satisfying resolutions, driving onward without any apparent destination.

Latest track Bar Cards trades in a similar uneasiness with a recurring melody which resets itself over and over before ever fulfilling its anthemic promise, and then gets kicked up the octave at the end in frustration, the melody remaining unchanged. Again, no closure.

Ironically though, Bored Shorts’ indifference to easy gratification turns out to be very bloody gratifying indeed. By refusing to tie up the loose ends, their songs linger in the mind. Not stuck in there on repeat like a sugary hook, but living on, attaching to your own anxieties, frustrations and desires, joining in their swirling quest for resolution.

Check the vid below for Day & Age shot recently in Sydney Park, check Bar Cards via the Dinosaur City Records Mixtape #3 and check the band live at YMO Fest this weekend.

WHAT: YMO Fest
WHO: Bored Shorts, Cakewalk, Georgia Mulligan + more
WHEN: Saturday 28 July
WHERE: Marrickville somewhere (check the fb event)
HOW MUCH: $10 on the door