Art Of Fighting

Australia's sentimental angst-ridden slo-core quartet Art Of Fighting, formed in 1997 in Melbourne by vocalists Ollie Browne and Peggy Frew, and guitarist Miles Browne, revolutionized the local school of low-fi pop both in terms of arrangement (by adopting a "spare but modernist" approach previously attempted only by Go-Betweens) and in terms of pathos (by harking back to slo-core bands such as Mazzy Star).

Following two EPs, The Very Strange Year (Half a Cow) and Empty Nights (Half a Cow), the first full-length album, Wires (2001 - 3 Beads of Sweat, 2002), delivered folk-pop a` la REM tinged with the spleen of the Red House Painters and American Music Club. More than a parade of dejected moments, it stood as a cascade of delicate emotions, alternating between calm acceptance and humble desperation: Skeletons, Akula, Moonlight, I Don't Keep a Record, Something New. The dramatic overtones and the sudden neurosis of the six-minute Just Say I'm Right capped a quiet excursion into psychic turbulence.

A more graceful and sublime atmosphere permeated the songs on Second Storey (Trifekta, 2004 - Bella Union, 2005). A couple, such as Along The Run and Your Easy Part, were blatantly melodic without sacrificing the band's psychological depth, while Break for Me, Busted Broken Forgotten, Where Trouble Lived, Come Round And Show Me laid the same spidery tapestry of the debut album, eventually leading to the intense closing of the mournful and quietly apocalyptic Heart Translation.