Isn’t it a funny feeling when you stumble across a new release to find that the artist’s been active (and successfully so) for years? It’s like dropping by a friend’s house to find there’s already a rager going on inside. Luckily enough, with psych-pop outfit These Guy’s new single ‘Idle Hands’ and accompanying wacky video clip, gatecrashers are welcome here.

Even if you’re late to the Meanjin/Brissy group’s party, arriving early may not have served you any better. To be sure, the quality of their earlier works are just as consistently warm and dreamily executed but there’s something special about falling into an expansive repertoire. It’s DIY pop at its best (or ‘self-help pop’ as founder Joe Saxby once described it). A consistent lo-fi fuzz, touches of experimentation, sustained synths and vocals as harmonic backdrops, languid pacing - These Guy have their sound down pat. This is exemplified in their newest release ‘Idle Hands’, where their previous single ‘What Happens Now’ pushed at the boundaries of their own sound. 

Since its release, the new single ‘Idle Hands’ has been championed by radios (triple j, 4ZZZ, Radio Adelaide) and long-standing cult music blogs alike. This makes sense - you could slot ‘Idle Hands’ into any playlist containing genre darlings Connan Mockasin, Deerhunter, or Mac Demarco and call it a day. The track’s core is about letting go, resigning yourself to the world’s whim. It’s no wonder These Guy chose hazy instrumentation with a BPM that doesn’t feel much higher than a resting heart rate. The wobbly backing sits easily in a major key with a honking saxophone punctuating the mix alongside the drums. But the music doesn’t sit in contrast to the pessimistic lyrical content. Instead, These Guy’s breezy instrumentation uplift the lyrics to a balanced bittersweetness. 

With this context in mind, the trio’s accompanying video clip to ‘Idle Hands’ serves to explore the idiom “the Devil finds work for idle hands”. Quite literally, too. The clip is a simple, offbeat concept. It’s positioned as though the band are unable to escape the Devil, even titling the clip as Idle Hands (Live From Hell). ‘Idle Hands’ juxtaposes a sax-tootin’ Satan alongside the band laid over clips of Bargara’s idyllic beaches and canefields, a la karaoke videos. Frontman Joe Saxby, hailing from Bargara himself, found the track and video’s inspiration in small towns like these. It’s where idleness can evolve into something more insidious; “I never understood how people living in such a beautiful part of the world could have a worldview that was so closed off to potential and to the transcendent.”

Perhaps it’s this curiosity and personal knowledge that lends These Guy an edge in their particular media. Regional perspectives and stories truly are the ‘road less travelled’. It’s refreshing to see artists explore the tangle of their roots, rather than using big city lights to blindside their past. Even if that means you use someone in a devil mask pretending to play a saxophone to do so.