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O<\/span>ccasionally the musical universe offers unexpected gifts that we might never have thought to ask for and had no right to expect. Strange Love, the debut album by new Melbourne supergroup Bleak Squad, is one such gift. The names speak for themselves: Adalita (Magic Dirt), Mick Harvey (the Bad Seeds, the Birthday Party), Mick Turner (Dirty Three) and Marty Brown (Art of Fighting, SodaStream, Claire Bowditch), who brought the band together.<\/p>\n Brown\u2019s intuition that such a combination would go well together has proven inspired. Such things can easily end up sounding better on paper than in practice. Instead, Bleak Squad sound pretty much exactly as you\u2019d expect, given their name and collective histories: the hour is late, the lights are low, the writing is sharp, the arrangements are tight \u2013 but the playing is expansive and open-ended, with songs designed to be stretched out in live performance.<\/p>\n This is a genuine collaboration, with significant written contributions from all four members. Vocals are shared mainly by Adalita and Harvey, with guitars by Adalita and Turner. Harvey, the best multi-instrumentalist, does a bit of everything, while Brown takes most of the drums, piano and more besides. In lesser hands, it could be a dog\u2019s breakfast, but the sound Bleak Squad have arrived at is coherent and fully formed.<\/p>\n Of course, Adalita, Harvey and Turner are all established soloists, with distinctive voices. You can hear echoes of all four members\u2019 respective projects, and the ghost of Harvey\u2019s old bandmate Rowland S Howard<\/a> seems to hover over all of it. But nothing feels forced or contrived. It\u2019s a real band: Strange Love sounds more like a fourth album than a first, by an act that\u2019s honed their craft for years.<\/p>\n