Following on from their excellent debut album Object Permanence, Melbourne quintet Hooper Crescent have returned today with ‘Best In Town’, a next taste of where their off-kilter brand of post-punk may be taking them next. When we last wrote about Hooper Crescent, we noted the band's ability to hide their pop sensibilities beneath their stark and sinewy sounds, but on ‘Best In Town’, we hear Hooper Crescent placing their acute songwriting smarts front and centre, without shaking the frenetic backbone that anchors their music.

Built around a forward-moving groove while a tangle of crystalline guitars and restless bass duck and weave, ‘Best In Town’ is instantly Hooper Crescent at their most assertive and steely-eyed. Across the track, we’re either struck by sharp vocal yelps or thick group melodies, and as the song unravels, synths zoom in and out erratically and trade places with imaginative saxophone lines, an instrumental first for the band that slips into their sound effortlessly. The band share that the track “aims to skewer the false identities we create in pursuit of cultural capital and status in an image obsessed world”, and cleverly, ‘Best In Town’ feels just as deceptive yet nowhere near as fleeting.

Paired with a brand new clip created by Rachel Feery, we’re welcomed into the band’s visual world for the first time, one that fittingly mirrors the precision of their sound while also hinting at the subtleties we’re likely to miss on a single listen. The clip doesn’t give much way, but that seems to be exactly the point - instead we’re immersed in a compelling blur of colour and movement that is as illusive as it is commanding.