Put this on after midnight, with the windows down and a long empty road ahead of you. ‘She’s Wild’ is a night-drive record, and it knows it. Australia’s Little Quirks used to sound like golden afternoons, and here the sun has gone down and the dashboard lights have come on. It’s still the same band, the same sisters at the front, but they’ve swapped the campfire for a car stereo turned up too loud.
The sound is built on contrast. There’s a shimmer to the guitars that I keep hearing as the Mazzy Star end of dream-pop, all reverb and slow-moving haze, and then the drums arrive with a swagger that belongs more to a Wilco-style rock band than to anything folk. ‘Game Boy’ is the loudest example, with a strut you could set your watch to and a chorus that sounds like it was written to be screamed across a festival field at dusk. ‘Little Red Dress’ has the same lift, with a pulse you can feel in your ribs. In a good way, it’s a band that has stopped asking permission.
The best thing here is what Abbey and Mia Toole’s voices do together. Sisters can blend in a way that’s almost unfair, with the same vowels and the same breath, and on ‘Fingertips’ and ‘Forbidden’ they let that closeness do the heavy lifting. The first is a hush, and you lean towards the speakers without noticing. The second is a slow burn in a dark room, the kind of song that makes the temperature drop a degree. Then ‘Love That Door’ swells and swells until the whole thing is spilling over the edges, and ‘Sacrifice’ closes the record like the final scene of a film you didn’t want to end, wide and windswept, with the harmonies rising like weather.
It’s only eight songs, but they’re eight with nowhere to hide and nothing wasted. I’ve heard bands twice this size say a fraction of this. ‘She’s Wild’ is the sound of Little Quirks stepping out of the warm glow and into the dark, and finding it suits them. They’re in the UK from 25th November, starting at The Victoria in London. Go and stand near the front.
Listen here: