Crooked Colours - Vera (LP)

Crooked Colours’ debut, Vera, landed in 2017 and still feels like the kind of record you reach for when the city’s gone quiet and you want something with a pulse that isn’t trying to shout over you. The Perth trio of Philip Slabber, Leon De Baughn and Liam Merrett-Park came up on Sweat It Out, and you can hear that label’s taste for sleek, tactile dance music in every corner here. What sets the album apart is how human it sounds. Slabber’s vocals sit low and warm in the mix, the synths breathe, and the percussion hits with the precision of a live drummer rather than a grid-locked machine.

Vera is the point where Crooked Colours figured out how to make indie and club music live in the same apartment. You get glittering arps and deep sub on one side, and on the other there’s guitar that actually feels played, not looped into submission. The production is handled by the band themselves, and the choices are tasteful. Nothing is crammed to the ceiling. There’s air around the drums, plenty of space for the bass to leave a footprint, and a patient sense of build that makes the inevitable drops feel earned rather than engineered.

Flow is the gateway track for a reason. It slides in with a smooth, aquatic synth bed and a clipped vocal hook, then opens out into one of those choruses you’ll catch yourself humming on the tram. It picked up solid triple j play at the time, and it’s easy to hear why. There’s a balance between melancholy and motion that Crooked Colours do better than most, like they’re letting you dance out a feeling rather than smother it. Come Back To You hits a similar vein, leaning into a wistful melody while the rhythm section keeps things moving. Neither track overplays its hand. They’re confident enough to leave room for the listener.

Across the album you hear small decisions that reveal a band thinking like producers and players at once. Kicks are cushioned but firm, hi-hats are dusty rather than brittle, and the synth patches sit somewhere between early evening house and late night trip hop. Slabber’s vocal tone is key to the mood. He never oversings, prefers murmured intensity over theatrics, and that restraint works in tandem with the songwriting. Hooks creep up on you. After a few listens, melodies you barely clocked on first pass start lodging in your head.

If you’ve caught them live, you know how much Liam’s drumming adds. Vera captures that feel even when the percussion is sequenced. The grooves have give, the fills tuck in at the right moments, and the bass programming always feels tied to a real player’s sense of pocket. That live energy is why this album holds up on a turntable. The low end is rounded, the mids are gentle, and there’s enough detail in the top end to reward a quiet listen with the lights low. If you’re hunting Crooked Colours vinyl, Vera is the one that makes you want to spin the whole side without reaching for the skip button.

There’s a lovely Australian-ness to the mood too, and not in a parochial way. It’s the touch of sun-faded brightness on the synths, the unhurried pacing, that sense of late arvo turning into night. You can hear why they slotted in so neatly with the Sweat It Out family and toured hard off the back of these songs. The record feels built for small rooms and festival tents alike, which is a neat trick for a debut.

For collectors, the Vera vinyl pressing is worth chasing. The artwork looks sharp in a 12-inch sleeve, and the mix translates nicely to wax so you can feel the kick and bass move the room without swamping the vocals. If you like to buy Crooked Colours records online, you won’t struggle to find copies floating around local shops and marketplaces. It’s the sort of release you’ll stumble across in a Melbourne record store and think, yeah, that will carry a Sunday afternoon. Among Crooked Colours albums on vinyl, this one is the clear starting point, especially if your shelves lean toward understated electronic and left-of-centre pop. For anyone building a stash of vinyl records Australia wide, Vera earns its spot the old-fashioned way, with songs that keep pulling you back in and production that still feels fresh years on.