Album Review: Bored Nothing - Bored Nothing

A handful of years ago, Fergus Miller – the man behind Bored Nothing – had no fixed address and certainly no master plan for success in the music world. He basically recorded homemade tapes and demos – a-la Daniel Johnston – while surfing from couch to couch, giving them away to anyone he thought might like them.

Fast forward to today, and Miller is now a permanent resident of Melbourne, has four of these tapes under his belt and a band made up of musical chums at his disposal. His recordings have proved to be such a talking point that they have been turned into this eponymous release. Just five of the tracks here have never appeared anywhere before; the rest were born on his tapes and on his Bandcamp page.

There is no chronology to the album, meaning that things bounce around from lovely melodic numbers in the vein of Teenage Fanclub, to fuzzy-as-hell shoegaze and garage pop. The thread that holds everything together though is Miller's lovely vocal. It has a softness that lands somewhere between Elliott Smith and Norman Blake. Charlie's Creek, for instance, sounds incredibly Smith-esque, while Darcy is an example of how grungy things can get. Sonically, Just Another Maniac falls twixt the two, and sets the tone for much of the rest of the record.

Bored Nothing perhaps sounds more like a collection of songs than a coherent album (because that's basically is what it is). But this 'greatest hits', of sorts, has plenty of excellent moments and showcases a really fine songwriter and indeed a name to watch in 2013.