Body Type / Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing's Surprising / Black Vinyl
Body Type formed in Sydney in 2016. Sophie was learning the guitar, and Cecil was picking up the drums for the first time, and the pair decided to jam together at a studio in Marrickville. Annabel and Georgia joined the fold through mutual acquaintances. The four-piece quickly began playing shows across Sydney every weekend and releasing a string of beloved singles (their debut track ‘Ludlow’ is always ebulliently sung by fans at live gigs). This culminated in shows at SXSW, slots at UK festival The Great Escape, headline concerts in L.A and New York, a sold-out show in London and a recorded performance at BBC’s Maida Vale studios, a hallowed institution where John Peel once held his live sessions. The band has also played alongside Fontaines D.C, Big Thief, Cate Le Bon, Pond, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Frankie Cosmos.
During this period, the band released two excellent, acclaimed EPs – titled EP1 and EP2, respectively.
“What was important about Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing's Surprising is that we got to do it the way that we wanted to do it. It brought us back to why we started the band in the first place” says Cecil. “It was just about making music with each other, and immersing ourselves back into the creative space we had built. It didn't have to be about anything else.”
The first single off Body Type’s long-awaited debut album Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing's Surprising begins with a plea: “Set me aflame with sex and rage!” It’s a rousing call for exuberance and exhilaration, in the face of banality and boredom; fittingly named after writer Eve Babitz’s cult novel Sex and Rage. Like Babitz’s prose, the album is exultant, effusive, playful, cutting, and maybe most significantly, incandescent in its fury. It’s an album all about yanking back control, embracing abandon and purging despair, told through the ragged margins of rock and punk.
Recorded swiftly over eight days in early 2020, just before the Australian band (comprised of Sophie McComish, Annabel Blackman, Cecil Coleman and Georgia Wilkinson-Derums) would be separated by the pandemic, the album came out of a desire to bottle a restlessness that had emerged after a time of stifled creativity. “We were coming out of a period that felt quite suffocating and restrictive,” says Sophie. “We just kind of regrouped and re-energised and did it ourselves". Recorded and mastered by Jonathan Boulet, and entirely self-funded, the album sounds joyfully anarchic, bursting with life and autonomy.
Tracklist:
A Line
The Brood
The Charm
Couple Song
Futurism
Hot Plastic Punishment
Flight Path
Buoyancy
Sex & Rage
An Animal
Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising