West Australian band Verge Collection brought out their debut album, Flaneur, earlier this year. With its unique combination of catchy hooks and existential dread, it’s the perfect album to listen to as the waters of assignments begin rising up to your neck.

The album’s title taught me a cool new word to use in an essay. It’s not, as I initially thought, a reference to wearing ‘flannos’, but a term meaning “a man who saunters around observing society.” This observational quality is all throughout the album, but is most prominent on fourth track ‘The Ladies’ when songwriter Benjamin Arnold tells the story of an ice addict moving around town. Songs like ‘Stop Think About It’ and ‘Long Comedown’ give advice like an older brother who has seen you about to make the same mistakes as him, as Verge Collection turn cautionary tales into loud, energetic sing-alongs.

What makes Arnold’s songwriting unique is exactly this… well… ‘flaneurisim’. While the band’s earlier work looked at mundane, personal experiences with witty lyrics worthy of Courtney Barnett, Flaneur sees the band turn their gaze to the world around them. It is still an undeniably personal record, with each song acting as a cathartic release of anxieties about wasting youth, getting old, and making poor decisions. Through this, though, Verge Collection paint a vivid image of what it’s like living out your twenties in Perth. In many ways, Flaneur talks of Perth the way Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not did about Sheffield more than a decade ago. Flaneur is full of incredibly crafted, poignant lyrics that will sometimes make you laugh and other times leave you in tears. All the while, though, you’ll be singing along at the top of your lungs and swaying to some of the catchiest songs about coughing up blood or making a fool of yourself at a party ever written.