Count on it. For the second time today, the Barman's gonna call me a hipster. And sandals, Movember and the latest thing all, as far as I am concerned, suck whale shit.
It ain't what you'd think from the cover, a stick figure lost in a desert with heat shimmering in front of it. But then, maybe it is.
You know how we go back to some bands, some lps over and over again, each time finding more to discover, knowing this strange personal trajectory of discovery will continue the rest of our lives?
Yeah, and you know how rare bands or LPs are that are like that?
Good. Faspeedelay's CD "Ghost on the Waterfront" is a cracking piece, and you'll be playing it over and over, and every year for the rest of your life.
Now, there's no lyrics, so suffer. The CD resembles a classical suite, or a bunch of connected jazz pieces. Which sounds horrible if we just leave it there. So: Ghost on the Waterfront is a corking, bounding series of rhythms locked in with sharp, killer bass and drums (Don Rogers and Rob Pelle) which let the guitar find the best ways to exploit the whole. So in between dancing like a monkey on meth, you notice how much fun all this is, and how superbly controlled the guitar is.
And you might zero in on that and let the guitarist (Charles Zammit) just take you away. I suspect you won't be the first - you certainly won't be the last.
No way could you see this band on a stage and keep sitting down. I reckon you'd be busy jigging up and down and, every now and then looking about for the film you think you're in, because if nothing else, Faspeedelay are like an audio film. Inventive, drag you in, get you bopping, then take you on either a car chase or a murder or a love scene in a supermarket. Pretty clever.
If Faspeedelay are anything like this live then we're all missing out. You know how The Dirty Three went off into the wide world and somehow made good? Yeah. Down where I am it's fucking Festival Fringe time and the bloody comedians and all the rest of the annoying good-time-buddy-buddy pests are generally getting in the way of everyday life. You know it's fucking festival fringe time because you keep getting stuck behind fucking converted camper vans with the sort of curtains 85 year-olds rejected sixty years ago on the windows.
Faspeedelay are fun, moving, intelligent and inventive and I think we have a right to expect great things from them. God knows what would happen if they found an equally gifted lyricist/ vocalist. As it stands they should have left this country long ago. I haven't been this impressed since I heard an early version of the Hungry Ghosts first lp.
By the way, if a theme or story suggests itself to the cd as a suite, then I guess it would be love and loss; not that it really matters, because the band take us with strength, skill, direction and purpose and we get in the car and just go. Just like sitting down in the movie theatre, one minute we're there, the next we're somewhere and someone else.
Exhilarating stuff. Eat this shit, Australia's Got Talent.
