Radarmaker are from the currently booming music scene in Perth, in Western Australia. The question all of you are asking right now, is whether this band took its name from the Mogwai song. The answer to this question is "yes," but misleadingly so. Like many of their contemporaries, such as Snowman or The Tigers, Radarmaker present a take on rock music, particularly indie rock music, that is intriguingly unique, possibly encouraged by the isolated nature of Perth itself. Drawn Like Spires is a commendably focused work, even in the variety of styles that Radarmaker employs. It is a more vocal-oriented work than their first EP, Aristocracy and the Horse, which moves through more lengthy instrumental sections,  as well as Slint-esque guitars and spoken vocals. By no means is this a setback, Radarmaker's two vocalists handle the workload admirably.

Drawn Like Spires moves everywhere from Jeff Buckley-esque songs ("Gary Oldman") to experimental, instrumental post-rock ("Sashegyi"), interspersed with short, instrumental, drum-less, guitar-based 1 to 2 minute ditties. All along the way, Radarmaker produces music that is perfect for a Sunday afternoon, with sensitive guitar sounds, analogue fuzzes, casual rhythms, the blissfully pleasant tones of female vocalist Wendi Graham and the similarly wonderful vocals from "quasi-frontman" Adam Trainer. However, beneath these elements, there is an intensity to Radarmaker's work, a sinister cynicism in its songwriting that gives it an attractive edge, that occasionally juxtaposes interestingly with the more blissful sections of this album.

This is most prevalent in the stunning and colorfully titled "Stop Being a Wanker," where beautifully uplifting guitars accompany cynical and irate lyrics and vocals. The dense guitar texturing of the song, an indie rock nirvana of jangly clean tones, open up strings and subtle harmonic color is demonstrative of some of the most attractive elements of Drawn Like Spires. In terms of intensity, this song is largely a crescendo, beginning with the aforementioned indie rock nirvana, and ending with an amazing wall of sound, distorted guitars playing the most juicy of chords, accompanied by agitated screams from frontman Trainer. Beauty in contrast.

In light of most of the album's focus on fairly brief quirky indie rock songs, the oddity of this album, then, can be seen as the 9-minute Mogwai-influenced instrumental post-rock jam of "Sashegyi". While a post-rock song in an album of other material can easily be seen as a redundant cash-out to a label of "variety" by a band that may not necessarily understand the style, here, Radarmaker have approached it with a clear idea of keeping interest over such a long time. With the fusion of indie rock, clean guitar sounds, with background ambient guitars, in mysteriously modal harmonic structures, Radarmaker offers up a take on post-rock that is interesting, and for the most part, avoiding stylistic plagiarism that plagues so much of post-rock today. Instead of detracting from the collection, "Sashegyi" enhances the palette offered up in Drawn Like Spires, continuing to demonstrate the vast range of these musicians.

Radarmaker have offered up, in Drawn Like Spires, a reasonably engaging collection of songs that span a stunning range of styles, all the time maintaining a blissfully listenable and enjoyable sound that doesn't sacrifice a reasonable level of intensity in the pursuit of creating beautiful music. Radarmaker have created the often pursued, and sometimes achieved "good album" rating, for good reason. This is a competent and engaging effort that declares Radarmaker as another of Perth's booming quirky indie rock fold.

-Marcus Whale