This record is so smart it should have lifetime membership of Mensa, but its a cleverness that's never snobbish or intellectual. Mr Flabio sits back, tongue in cheek and pen at the ready, and takes aim at the directionless, the Interwebs generation and yes, you and me, with withering accuracy. This is melodic fuzz guitars played at stun volume and Mr Flabio’s sardonic barbs are meted out with sugar hits embedded in their pop hooks.
Let’s get this out of the way up front: “We Will Riot” is a grunge record. It’s just gone 2015 and someone is actually making a grunge record? What the fuck’s grunge anyway? You expected Silverchair with short hair? Nirvana wearing nursing home pyjamas?
Mudhoney says Kim Salmon invented it and who are we to argue? When you got down to it, grunge was really just a bunch of tuned-down metallised guitars and anguished punk rock vocals with shithouse dress sense. It got the major labels a little too excited and wiped the musical landscape clean for any other form of rock and roll – and not necessarily in a good way.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 5809
This album stinks so much of stale beer that you’ll wonder if you hit your head on the footpath on a late-night bender and woke up in a homeless shelter It reeks of hops - and i don’t mean that nancy boy craft shit either. This is your stock standard, public bar piss. So fuck off if you want a cocktail.
Which should all be no surprise. It’s the fourth studio album in 15 years for the VeeBees and “Outta Ammo” is no great departure, sonically speaking, from its predecessors. It’s crude and dirty with a nod to Moorhead, the Tatts, Powder Monkeys and the Psychos. When you’re on a good thing, why not stick to it?
Aussie Yob Rock has been around since Thorpey plugged in and killed that tankful of fish to the sound of punters yelling “Suck more piss.” VeeBees bypass boogie and play it with an edge that betrays listening to lots of hardcore, especially Black Flag.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 4991
I have a bad reputation as a reviewer. Though 70 percent of my reviews are fanatically positive, I can be harsh on anyone I find not pulling their weight. But, given the fact I have a collection of several thousand discs, I can’t be THAT fussy, can I? Christ, all I generally ask is that you don’t scrape your knuckles on the floor.
Fox Company don’t really fit into my preferred choice of listening. For me, they float uncomfortably close to the world of Guns ’n’ Roses. But I also know that floating uncomfortably close to the world of Guns ’n’ Roses isn’t necessarily considered to be a bad thing by a huge chunk of people who listen to rock music and, in particular, that chunk of readers who view me as a cranky and crusty old relic.
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- By Bob Short
- Hits: 3890
Reviewing the new Radio Birdman box set is an absolute poisoned chalice. You know I’m going to give it five bottles, right? It contains most of the great recordings by the greatest band to have sprung from these shores. Bar none.
I include everyone in that statement from the Easybeats through AC/DC and onto whatever crap that is currently passing itself off as popular music. Forget your Hoodoo Gurus and your Sunnyboys, your Birthday Party and your assorted Johnny Come Latelys. This band was Ground Zero and Year Zero. Accept no substitutes.
"Radio Birdman. Box Set. Seven CDs. One DVD. One hundred Aussie bucks. Five Bottles. Yay. It’s great."
And that has been the extent of the reviews of this thing. Nobody has wanted to prod it with a stick and turn it on its side. And with several good reasons. Radio Birdman have always put the fanatic into fans. No more surly beast has ever walked the earth than a Radio Birdman fan.
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- By Bob Short
- Hits: 11542
You all know who Dan Brodie is, right? He’s released several LPs and EPs and yeah. You need this lil’ gem in your collection.
Why? Apart from the songs, it’s a fine little story of r’n’r excess, consequences, surgical procedures and ends with a damn-the-consequences romp in sterling style. I’ll quickly add that the production on the EP is damn fine too - that’s Glen Hewer, and the mastering is raucous and clean: David Briggs.
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- By Robert Brokenmouth & The Barman
- Hits: 5621
Here it is folks - this is the sound the “cool kids” make these days. “Cool kids” being what the wearers would dismissive as a totally pejorative term, but essentially being a title for whatever constitutes a “scene maker” in these musically fractured times. “Scene” being another pejorative word.
It’s hard to keep up with contemporary music once you pass a certain age - even when you’re consciously trying to cock an ear to what seeps out of cracks in the footpath and shuns daylight. Of course it’s a given that you shouldn’t pay attention to just about ANYTHING that makes it to commercial radio airwaves, but in this case "contemporary" means the underground shit, maaan. And Los Tones are under the commercial radar by any measure.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 5800
Although this intense Melbourne, moatly-instrumental, punk rock band (containing two ex-members of Venom P Stinger) has placed "Movement" first, "The Marianas" was recorded some four years earlier, so I decided to listen to that first.
Yes, this is a double CD set, and it’s not one of those purple burns either. Properly recorded (by Rick Ferrara) in a real paid-for studio, mixed by the band and mastered by head Spook Loki Lockwood, the band spent some time and serious dosh on this. They wanted us to hear it.
Er, yes, well, I do apologise for taking a little while to get to it, it arrived in my inbox a few months ago. (It came out in 2009 and - mea culpa - I lost it down the back of the lounge - ED.) Which turns out to be a good idea, as I don’t enjoy "Movement" as much as "The Marianas". I’m pretty sure the Drown’s pack is a four bottle item, so stop picking your nose and pay attention at the back.
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- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 4443
This LP you’re gonna sink into like a warm bath on a winter’s day… This is one sexy album. In a way, it’s got ‘make-out disk’ pencilled all over it…
It’s a sequel to Gluck's 1987 cult classic, “I Knew Buffalo Bill”.
Get this, though. Jeremy Gluck - ex-Barracudas singer and collaborator with Nikki Sudden, Rowland S. Howard and Jeffrey Lee Pierce - is hugely talented. Here we have a man who’s found another way to get our attention and make us smile and cry and dance… all to his trademark confessional style… hard to pull off, yet so easy for Gluck …
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- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 8138
What do you think we’d say? Sonic’s Rendezvous Band was truly The One That Got Away. It’s a crime they weren’t signed, recorded and backed to the hilt by a major label and elevated to a household name, but rock and roll is seldom fair. That’s why you need to hear everything you can of this great lost band.
Never heard outside a small circle of alumni and fans, this short but sweet five-song set comes from the January 14,1978 show, on the undercard to the Ramones and the Runaways at the Masonic Temple in Detroit. Maybe.
The opening act was un-billed and surviving band members (that would be Gary and Scott) can’t agree that they played it. All but one song (“City Slang”) has remained in the vaults and the label thought it had issued the gig as part of its splendid box set. But that disc wasn’t even from one entire show, if that makes sense.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 6647
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