In the brief history of Reverb Raccoon’s Song of the Day, we’ve visited Scotland, Austria, Tasmania, and a sweep of American towns. Today we journey to Perth, a lovely but rather expensive village in Western Australia of which I’ve had the pleasure to visit a few times. I was there in 2010 during The Ashes, an event in which several men stand in a large circle working on their suntans while another gentleman attempts to strike a rudely-thrown ball with a bit of scrap lumber. Despite taking a running start, the hurler is never able to get the ball to the man holding the plank without bouncing it off the ground. And in the unlikely event that the plank-wielder succeeds in deflecting the ball directly at one of the sunbathers, and the startled gentleman actually catches it, everyone acts as if they’ve just won the lottery. Also, I learned that when the television announcer says, “The Fremantle doctor is now coming across the pitch,” it doesn’t mean that someone has passed out from sunstroke and they’re sending in the stretcher-bearers. It’s just the locals’ quaint way of saying that the wind is blowing.

But back to the Song of the Day… Today we are treated to a cover of Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman” by Mockingbirds, an a cappella group associated with St. George’s College of UWA. A cappella groups are all the rage on college campuses because they don’t have to pay backing musicians union scale. Mockingbirds is a bit light on the low end, and I wouldn’t want to hear them take on “Men of Harlech,” but this is a delightful foray nonetheless, recalling the Andrews Sisters of bygone days and the harmonies of Melbourne’s The Little Sisters.

Be sure to download (and pay for) “Dangerous Woman” on Mockingbirds’ Bandcamp page. Visit the group on Facebook, and follow them on Instagram.

Bonus Trivia: Mockingbirds are New World passerine birds of the family Mimidae. The mockingbird is the State Bird of my native province of Tennessee, and of my current residence of Texas. I didn’t know they inhabited Western Australia, or had swallowtails, but apparently they do.