Oya Paya – ‘Slumped Up’ album review: trapped between slacker and punk
If you told me Oya Paya were American, I’d believe you. In fact, even after a few goes around of their debut album, I’m still having a hard time believing the Liverpool-originating band are anything other than old midwest emos. The conflict comes when trying to decide if that’s a good thing or not.
With no American insight, the band’s three members hail from the far-off corners of South East Asia, Merseyside and the south of England. They’re dubbed a slacker-punk trio, which basically means that the three come together to make music that battles between rowdiness and haziness. As the album opens with ‘In Pieces’, that label instantly makes sense. It sounds like what would happen if you crossed Mac DeMarco with ’90s grunge outfits like The Lemonheads or Nirvana. The song fosters more of a head bang than a head bop, but not an all-out mosh.
From track one to the end, it’s easy to get lost in the mildness of the sound. And is this midway house questioning its purpose? It’s too gruff to relax into but far from gruff enough to invigorate. On tracks like ‘Manoeuvre’, the three and a half minutes are spent waiting for something to happen. The same goes for ‘Focus’, a single that was released so far back that it is now dusty.
As a debut album, Slumped Up is naturally going to be a gathering of work that’s come before. But with five out of 12 tracks having already been out in the world for a while – taking two tracks from a previous EP three years ago – I wonder if the tracklist could quickly become stale even for old, loyal fans? And I wonder how the band might fare from hereon when they can no longer rely on old, beloved cuts?
There are moments of interest on Slumped Up. Depending on each listener’s own music taste, the record splits into two camps. ‘Hesitated, So Complicated’ and ‘5th September’ stand out as tracks that would please fans of the midwest scene, having loose flavours of American Football, Pinegrove or Slaughterbeach Dog but with a more frantic edge.
If that’s not your bag, elsewhere, the record strays into more indie territory. ‘Call It’ could be an early Strokes cut, ‘Help Me Understand’ basically arrives wearing a floppy cap and Vans, and a lot of their finest moments of instrumental layering or interesting melodies feel reminiscent of Liverpool’s lost Hers. It’s these moments where the band raises the stakes a little to try and get some feet moving that they shine brightest.
But the major worry is the faltering originality, highlighted by the band themselves failing to cut enough new tracks to render this record a remotely enticing option. What’s there is steady, but most of their fanciest flashes we’ve heard before.
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