REVIEW: EMPIRE OF THE SUN - ASK THAT GOD

4/5

Sun God.

God is love, like Marvin Gaye sang, and under the sun we have a new album from the Empire. No, not 'Star Wars', but the futuristic sound of the band named after a Steven Spielberg war movie starring John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson and a young Christian Bale. Australian act, Empire Of The Sun are back. Almost a decade after 2016's 'Two Vines' showed us that the electronic music duo have still got it when it comes to 'Walking On A Dream' and looking so Bowie glam, even Ziggy could take notes. All in the same year fellow early 2000s electric, eclectic pop luminaries MGMT returned with a 'Loss Of Life', this February, like it was no longer time to pretend.

Want to hear it? All you have to do is 'Ask That God' does too. As the Sun shows us Aussie's still rule music like the great INXS, AC/DC, and modern greats like The Jezabels (come back soon) and Angus and Julia Stone, who also came back this year from Down Under with 'Cape Forestier'. It's been a great year for music from beyond the Gold Coast, and now it's complete with the tide that comes in for this musical ship that sails to Thailand, and all spots in the Far East, like Japanese 'Cherry Blossom'. That single, plus the summer scorchers of 'Music On The Radio', 'Changes' (no, it's not a Tupac or Ozzy cover) and 'That Feeling You Get', complete with their epic, electric vivid videos of dynamic direction show us that pure pop music can border on the biblical. Art like this album's classic cover to add to the compelling collection, like the part two of 'Ice On The Dune' for your messiah.

The fabulous flamboyance of Nick Littlemore and Luke Steele in this iconic hour of chaos can not be tamed...and who would want that? But it is these amazing artists who are in awe from their rickshaw as they traverse the Thai streets. It's enough for them to harmonize on the instrumental ending, almost seven-minute 'Rhapsodize', that waxes lyrical like a closer, until it is chased by the compelling, different but definitive 'Friends I Know'. This EMI Australia record even features friends the former members of The Sleepy Jackson and PNAU know. Collaborating with Littlemore's latter project on the accomplished 'AEIOU' that's as delightfully daft as a punctuated punk. For this fourth album, complete with its own four-date Australian tour, a blessed Steele says the LP, "represents the greatest shift in consciousness our world has ever seen and that's reflected in the music." Meanwhile, Nick adds, "there might have been as many as 1,200 songs that we wrote in that time to get to the 12 we have here."

Tuning in like 'Television', all the way to the titular track, we would have listened to all one thousand plus too. Because there's just something so soulful about this electrical storm that will wash over you too when you give it all a listen. Saved from the cutting room floor, we get the likes of 'Happy Like You' that keeps the joy euphoric and the brooding bliss of 'Revolve' that circles around these boys in a bubble, bordering a bonsai tree. "Me and my rhythm/Use it in my day/Individual stance/Underground heaven/Urban duck and cover/Mama's at the door/Shaking cans of soda/Forty on the floor", Steele sings, as "all around the world, boys and girls are falling in love." It's a 'Wild World' too. One that knows, "Somebody told me everybody's lonely/So many phoney/Innocence is in me and you/Can't have it both ways/Everybody's gotta do my love/'Cause we're opening doors." That's the resolve to revolve on from these Sun God's like a Wu-Tang son or 'One Piece' Japanese anime character. This Empire hits you with a sun burning charge, as you plug into the real escape plan from a planet in peril. You couldn't ask that God give you anything more. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Playlist Picks: 'Music On The Radio', 'Cherry Blossom', 'Rhapsodize'.

Spin This: Empire Of The Sun 'Two Vines'.