Eternal Life – Guttercats (Take The City/Wishing Well/Sweet Grooves)Guts Guttercat sings in English and adds acoustic guitar. He’s clearly the heart and soul of Guttercats. With his dramatic phrasing, at times he comes across as a Gallic Nikki Sudden, intoning in a moderately well-off baritone one minute and trailing away to a half-whisper the next.
The engine room doesn’t try anything flash (although drummer Adrian Calvez is a multi-instrumentalist who adds overdubbed synth and piano), and they’re the canvas upon which Guts and bandmates paint their sonic pictures.
Ever walk into a French restaurant in Paris with no functional grasp of the local language and find yourself confronted by a menu that’s impenetrable – only to be served by a waiter who’s even more so? “Eternal Life” is a stew. A garbure, to be precise. A good garbure should be so full of ingredients that your spoon stands up in it. Sometimes, it’s served in two courses - firstly as broth poured over toasts, and then meat and seasonal vegetables.
“Eternal Life” is a bit like that. If you’re a rock guy, you might need to consume it at a couple of sittings. Or not rely on a humble Barman from Sydney to give you a steer on the ingredients. It's a Melbourne kinda record.
The opener “Wild Animal” sounds like late-period Triffids with viola and synth prominent in the arrangement. There’s a similar feel to “Farewell”. “Dark Room” unfurls a mess of dirty fuzz guitar on top of a conventional rock and roll feel. “Keep The F lame” features some caustic fuzz guitar from resident six-stringer exponent Chris Waldo.
“If I Had a Loaded Gun” tries to be menacing but the muted guitar line holds it back, and it doesn’t fulfill its promise. The title track is the closest thing to a pop song with Guts twisting the lyrics in a cool French way (“I bel-ieve in…eeee-tern-al life”) and Waldo adding some uplifting guitar.
The CD version adds two bonus tracks, “Sweet Lies, Betrayal & Adultery” and “Wild Animal”. The former could pass for a Johnny Thunders ballad, stripped of sloppy guitar and rendered in a way that only a Frenchman could get away with. “Wild Animal” is an acoustic number with vocals weirdly double-tracked. The best advice here is: Don’t Operate Heavy Machinery While Listening. 
1/4
