I vaguely remember first hearing about the Australian band Dick Diver from a fellow Aussie girl oozing compliments about them during Portland’s Music Fest Northwest this past fall, however it took a certain Swede‘s year-end favorites list to properly jog my memory and steer me towards checking out their music. Although their myspace page doesn’t provide much fanfare, the two tracks featured, “Tender Years” and “Walk for Room”, make for great listens, with the former providing me with enough incentive to buy their Arks Up EP off of iTunes.

No doubt the band name and possibly the track title is a nod to the F. Scott Fitzgerald work — with the slinking melody of the song providing a good hypothetical soundtrack to multiple scenes in the film adaptation. Opening up with a slow paced surf & flamenco guitar line that the Danish act The Good The Bad would be proud of, the dusky tone is set from the beginning and escalates over the course of the five-minute song. Lines like “take one step back from the edge…” and “he loves you / and he don’t want you to die / not just yet…” sung by the vocalist in an Alex Kapranos-like fashion certainly heightens the film noir feel, leading the track through dark passages and corridors similar to The Raveonettes’ “Aly Walk With Me”. As expected, everything keeps building until the inevitable climax — and boy is it a payoff! Reminiscent of Woods’ opening of “To Clean”, guitarists Alastair McKay and Rupert Edwards absolutely slay the last 90 seconds of the song before abruptly resolving and leaving the listener with only a haunting last chord echoing in their ears.

Embarrassing to admit I know, but I think I would have a problem generating a Top Ten Australian bands list. If it wasn’t for Cut Copy and The Presets — both acts who are immensely popular in their home country — I would have to at least scratch my head to come up with some names off the top of my head. However, if I take anything from Dick Diver’s tunes it’s that I need to be looking more closely because there is definitely something going on — something great — in the land down under.

Dick Diver // Tender Years