Maturation is a disease that afflicts plenty of bands, and quite often causes them to go down the road of mediocre albums and incur change of audience real fast. Nowhere is this more evident than on Title Fight’s latest album, Hyperview. Back in 2011, Title Fight made their name with their debut album Shed, released on the hardcore label SideOneDummy. Shed was a speedy little pop punk album that bore quite a strong hardcore influence, akin to bands such as Lifetime or Have Heart and it captured the hearts of critics around the United States. Shed wasn’t a huge commercial success by any means, but it did allow Title Fight to develop quite a reputation in the American punk scene. Their follow-up album Floral Green ditched a lot of the hardcore trappings and contained strong alternative rock and shoegaze overtones, which diluted their sound quite a bit. However, it still had the same fiery punk spirit and gritty production of their early work in order to satisfy their fans.
For Hyperview, however, Title Fight have mostly ditched whatever semblance of hardcore and pop punk remained in their music, choosing to dive face-forward into the world of shoegaze. The tracks on Hyperview echo with enough reverb and breathy vocals, it’d make Kevin Shields cry tears of joy. “Chlorine” is a nice jangly tune, that probably would have been a great hit on MTV’s 120 Minutes two decades ago. “Your Pain Is Mine Now” is arguably the centrepiece of the whole album, a beautifully melancholic cut that evokes the breezy shoegaze of acts such as Galaxie 500 or Lush. The production on Hyperview is undoubtedly slicker and less grittier than Title Fight’s previous recordings, however it seems as if the band relies too much on the production. Lead singer Jamie Rhoden appears to have given up the barking vocals of earlier releases, opting for a softer My Bloody Valentine-esque cooing vocal style, typical of shoegaze singers. Unfortunately, this schtick gets old real fast, as does the album itself. Once the first five songs finish, Hyperview quickly descends into bland, monotonous shoegaze wankery.
Compared to the raucous and blistering melodic-tinged hardcore of their earlier albums, Hyperview is definitely a much more gentle and softer affair, and it suffers due to this factor. The jangling riff that opens “Your Pain Is Mine Now” makes you wonder whether Title Fight are closet Smiths fanatics, and Rhoden’s vocals really make you question whether or not he’s been listening to too much Ride. “Trace Me Onto You” with its driving guitar and vaguely pop punk-e is arguably the closest Hyperview comes to catching the upbeat and energetic spirit of Title Fight’s earlier recordings, acting as a decent throwback in the last quarter, amid a sea of dull reverberated guitars and little to no drumming.The songs all sound pretty enough, but there’s not a whole lot of substance to them. You get the feeling that the band compromised on the songwriting, just to make the production sound better and more spectacular in the process. The majority of the songs don’t stick with you at all, the album just sort of floats off in its own cloudy haze, there’s nothing to really grab you at all. Even with shoegaze, you still need a decent melody or groove in order to hook the listener in, and James Brown’s decayed corpse would have more groove in it than the songs on Hyperview.
Whereas Floral Green was a nice compromise between the more mosh-friendly hardcore and introspective naval-gazing alt rock, Hyperview takes the latter. If you’re a fan of acts like Pity Sex or Citizen, who similarly put a more punk influenced spin on the traditional shoegaze formula, then Title Fight’s latest album should be right up your alley. However if you’re a die-hard fan of the band and miss their grittier music, there’s not much to like here I’m afraid. Evolving an established sound can make or break a band and in Title Fight’s case, I sadly think that is has hampered them quite drastically. You could make the argument that Hyperview’s sleeker and slightly more commercial-friendly sound benefits the group, as you could easily picture half the songs on here making an impact on commercial radio. However, if they have to compromise their original sound in order to grow and mature like that, what’s the point? Sorry Title Fight, you’ve lost me on this one.
Pop punk has always been seen as the red-headed stepchild of the punk family. The sheer idea that someone would have the audacity to link pop music to something as rebellious and uncommercial as punk was considered a slap in the face to the eyes of the punk community. While bands such as the Ramones and the Buzzcocks had flirted with pop structures before, and their successors in the Descendents and Screeching Weasel took it to an art form, the idea of pop punk fully breaking into the mainstream was considered a pipe dream and a sacrilegious one at that. In 1994, Green Day’s Dookie and The Offspring’s Smash came close, with both going multi-platinum and landing on the number one spot in multiple countries respectively. However, these bands at least had a shred of respectability about them. Green Day emerged from the famed Gilman Street punk scene that spawned bands such as Operation Ivy and Jawbreaker, and The Offspring had spent the past few years paying their dues on Brett Guerwitz Epitaph Records, well-known for putting out records for SoCal scene luminaries like NOFX, Pennywise and Guerwitz’s own Bad Religion. However, Blink-182 were cut from a different cloth than their peers. Ultimately the trio of Mark Hoppus, Tom Delonge and Travis Barker would be the ones to unite punk rock and pop music in a way that no one had thought possible before, opening the floodgates for countless imitators and successors alike. And we have their 1999 smash-hit Enema Of The State to thank for that.
The groups previous albums Cheshire Cat and Dude Ranch had been released on a small San Diego-based indie label, Cargo Records, and gained the band a significant underground buzz in Southern California. Dude Ranch scored the band a huge hit with lead single, Dammit, which climbed all the way up to no. 11 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts, and gained the band some minor airplay on commercial radio and MTV in late 1997. Subsequent slots on the Vans Warped Tour allowed Blink-182 to build a sizeable international following, earning them fans as far as Australia and the United Kingdom in the process. As 1998 dawned, Blink-182 fired their original drummer Scott Raynor, for what they perceived as relative incompetence and a lack of dedication to the band. Raynor was then replaced with drummer Travis Barker, fresh from a stint in Orange County ska-punk band The Aquabats. The fresh sound that Barker brought to the group would prove to become a key reason in their sudden commercial dominance. For the follow-up to Dude Ranch, Blink decided to work with veteran producer Jerry Finn, who had experience in helping pop punk bands adjusting to their major label debuts, with engineering credits on Green Day’s Dookie, Jawbreaker’s Dear You and The Muff’s Blonder and Blonder to his name. Finn provided the band with a slick, radio-friendly sound, with Enema Of The State being so polished, that it bore little resemblance to the gritty, lo-fi recordings that had typified the sound of Dude Ranch and Cheshire Cat. However, this new sound would prove to be critical to Blink’s success in the near-future.
Enema Of The State was a watershed moment for pop punk, and by extension pop punk as a whole. The album took all of the elements that had made 90’s pop punk so great and wrapped it in a safe, MTV-ready package, ready for teenyboppers all over America to enjoy. “All The Small Things” would prove to be the moment when pop punk became a cultural force to be reckoned with. Written by former-guitarist Tom Delonge as an ode to his wife, as well as a tribute to the Ramones, it was primarily written to be a catchy radio single and ensure the album earned its keep for the bands new label, MCA. Unleashing the single in the first month of the new millenium, “All The Small Things”, with its familiar C F G progression, memorable chorus and boy-band satirizing music video, helped Blink-182 to gain a sizable fanbase well beyond the tiny Southern California scene they had emerged from. It climbed all the way up to the top of the TRL charts, and was subsequently retired after 65 consecutive days hanging around the chart Follow-up singles such as “What’s My Age Again?” and “Adam’s Song” proved the band weren’t simply one hit wonders, and knew damn well how to capitalize on their new found fame, repeating the same formula of comedic timing and catchy hooks which had made “All The Small Things” such a big hit. Even the deep cuts on the album weren’t that bad, “Aliens Exist” explored singer Tom Delonge’s fascination with UFO encounters, while “Mutt” remains one of the band’s more enduring singles-that-never-were, although it did make its way into the American Pie soundtrack, setting a precedent for future bands such as Sum 41 and The All-American Rejects. However, Blink-182’s antics did little to endear them to the critics of the time. The band’s overly jokey nature and seemingly carefree attitude towards commercial success clashed with the staunchly elitist scene police who seemed to populate punk rock at the time.
To those who had lived through Fugazi and held labels such as Lookout, Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords close to their heart, Blink-182 and their enormous success must have seemed like a massive ‘fuck you’ to their way of life. Many music outlets were less than positive to Blink’s overly-commercial take on punk rock. British publication NME compared them to “that sanitised, castrated, shrink-wrapped ‘new wave’ crap that the major US record companies pumped out circa 1981 in their belated attempt to jump on the ‘punk’ bandwagon.” and Rolling Stone dismissed them as “harmless” back when Enema first dropped in 1999, presumably too busy drooling over Modest Mouse and Sigur Rós records to care about pop punk. Pitchfork wouldn’t even give Blink-182 the time of day, despite taking time out of their schedule to rip on Jimmy Eat World and The Get Up Kids. The fact that “Adam’s Song” paraphrases Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” is no coincidence. In many ways, to the horror of music historians everywhere, you can easily draw parallel’s between Blink opening the floodgates for pop punk in the 2000’s to Nirvana’s launching of the Seattle sound into the mainstream a decade earlier. While Nevermind was responsible for inspiring grunge wannabes such as Candlebox, Bush and Silverchair, Enema Of The State subsequently opened the doors for artists as revolutionary as Good Charlotte, Bowling For Soup and Avril Lavigne. Suddenly, the fangirls holding up the signs for Blink in the “All The Small Things” video didn’t seem so funny anymore.
It wasn’t all terrible though. The success of Enema Of The State allowed for the band’s fellow-minded Warped Tour regulars such as New Found Glory, Sum 41 and Fall Out Boy to break into the mainstream, which subsequently paved the way for labels such as Drive-Thru Records and Fueled By Ramen to establish their cultural dominance over the alternative music scene. In many ways, we have Blink-182 to thank for virtually directing the past 15 odd years of pop punk and all its related subgenres. You can hear the angst and pathetic lyrics of “What’s My Age Again?” in bands such as The Wonder Years and The Story So Far, while the flair for soaringly catchy choruses seems to have been transmitted to outfits like A Day To Remember and Chunk! No Captain Chunk. Even such critically adored indie acts contain traces of Blink’s DNA in them, with Pitchfork favourites Japandroids and Cloud Nothings embodying the energetic spirit and penchant for catchy hooks (dick jokes not included though). Even Nathan Williams of the bratty, garage rock outfit band Wavves listed Blink as a major influence on his output. Tjat surely must have thrown the hipsters for a spin when they realized King Of The Beach was just Take Off Your Pants And Jacket with worse production values and less lyrics about fucking dogs in the ass. The minute those opening chords of “All The Small Things” hit your ears, it’s like being transported into a state of undiluted enjoyment. If you’re open minded enough to appreciate pop punk in all its adolescent glory, give Enema Of The State a listen and get ready to re-live your primary school years all over again. You won’t be disappointed.
The Australian music industry seems to be built upon regurgitating the same ideas over and over again, while overly praising bands who stick to simplistic formulas and ignoring ones willing to take major risks. Bands such as Jet or Wolfmother can gain massive amounts of local acclaim for copying acts from the past, while bands from more niche genres such as Sleepmakeswaves or Karnivool get swept under the rug as an embarrassing stain on our oh so pristine musical legacy. And then you have the matter of tall-poppy syndrome, wherein acts who taste just a smidgen of overseas success are shunned by the Australian public and treated like they never existed (INXS and AC/DC excluded, obviously). Let me make something clear: this is not a list comprised of critically adored, Pitchfork approved artists who have been “making waves” in Australia for years. On that note, this isn’t a list of flavour of the month bands who scored a high-playing single on Triple J then were dumped by their record labels, either. This is a group of bands who I feel have been given the short end of the stick by music aficionados and the general public over time. Some have had hits, some barely tasted success, but either way, these artists deserve some damn respect from you people. I’m fully aware of getting multiple articles questioning my sense of patriotism and/or sexual orientation. Here we go.
10: Dirty Three
Warren Ellis is quite well regarded for his work with Nick Cave in both The Bad Seeds and Grinderman, but his side-project the Dirty Three doesn’t seem to be held in quite the same regard. This perplexes me, since Dirty Three definitely sound like friendlier to the ears than either of his main projects. Dirty Three’s music falls under the moniker of “post-rock” but unlike other bands in that genre, like Sigur Ros or Mogwai, Dirty Three’s work posesses an ethereal quality that sounds both otherworldly and yet distinctly grounded in reality at the same time. While most post-rock bands are content to dick around in the studio, fiddle with reverb and insert as many cryptic samples as is humanly possible, the Dirty Three let their musical abilities do the talking, with all of the band members being extremely proficient in their chosen instrument. Warren Ellis’s violin manages to sound reserved, without descending into cheesy new-age cliches, while guitarist Mick Turner manages to craft atmospheric and melancholic soundscapes with the ease of a professional. And Jim White manages to be the glue that holds the trio together, displaying the type of drumming ability that hearkens back to the krautrock and progressive rock bands of the 70’s, without sounding like a pale imitation. The groups 1998 album Ocean Songs is the perfect representation of the band, containing everything that makes Dirty Three great, clocking in at an impressive 66 minutes of pure bliss and magnificent soundscapes. It actually does feel like you’re in an ocean, floating along while the band soundtracks your adventures.
9: Parkway Drive
While Australia had a handful of hardcore and metal bands scattered around the country prior to their breakthrough, Parkway Drive were the ones to fully unite Australians in a wave of headbanging, moshing goodness. With a sound influenced as much by death metal outfits such as At The Gates and Cannibal Corpse as it was Bad Religion and Hatebreed, Parkway Drive single-handedly brought the Australian metalcore scene into the mainstream, laying the stage for fellow bands such as The Amity Affliction and I Killed The Prom Queen Bay in the process. Winston McCall’s gruff vocals, Ben Gordon’s psychopathically intense drumming and Jeff Ling’s penchant for hard-edged breakdowns helped Parkway Drive build a solid fanbase, both in Australia and abroad. 2005’s Killing With A Smile showed their love of hardcore punk and melodic-tinged metalcore, but it was 2007’s Horizons in which the group cemented both their sound and reputation. As pioneers, Parkway Drive were one of the first bands to take the Australian-bred metalcore sound internationally, performing on the esteemed Vans Warped Tour in the United States, while also embarking on multiple European tours as well. A near constant touring schedule has earned the band a solid reputation in the metal scene, and at least three of their albums have gone Gold in Australia. While commercial radio pays them no mind, and Triple J seems to barely acknowledge their existence, Parkway Drive shows that you don’t need radio stations to get your point across. As the kind of band who’s just as keen to play an all-ages festival in Brisbane, and then bring the house down at a packed club the next night, Parkway Drive are easily one of the most versatile and underrated bands in Australian history.
8: The Church
If there’s one band that absolutely do not deserve the tag ‘one-hit-wonder’, it’s The Church. Steve Kilbey and his merry band of jangly 80’s alt-rockers are so much more than “Under The Milky Way”, it’s staggering. Yes, it’s a great song. Yes, it was used to great effect in Donnie Darko, we get it. But did you also know that Starfish, the album it came from, is one of the most underrated albums of the 80’s? Did you know that the band released several other killer singles in the decade, such as “The Unguarded Moment”, “Almost With You” and “Reptile”? The Church pretty much took the spacey, psychedelic sounds of bands such as Echo & The Bunnymen and The Psychedelic Furs and put their own unique spin on it. These Sydneysiders were one of the more inventive bands to emerge from the Australian underground, eschewing the excesses of their fellow bands for a more traditional, yet still quite daring sound. They, along with their contemporaries The Triffids and The Go-Betweens essentially spearheaded Australian alternative rock throughout the decade, before grunge came along and everyone became content with ripping off Nirvana. Nonetheless, The Church’s string of albums in the mid-80’s from Of Skins And Heart up to Starfish remain some of the most compelling albums to have ever been recorded in the southern hemisphere.
7: The Basics
I’ve spoken about The Basics before briefly, when mentioning their troubles in gaining airplay from Triple J. With well over 1000 live performances under their belt, The Basics could very well lay claim to being the hardest working band in Australia today. Unlike the reserved and quirky indie pop of De Backer’s Gotye project, The Basics output tends to span multiple genres and the group is very unpredictable in their approach. It’s very hard to describe the overall sound of The Basics, since they jump around from genre to genre with the glee of a five year old on a sugar high. One minute they’ll be giving you a bloodthirsty diatribe in the form of the hard rocking “The Lucky Country”, next they’ll be playing you a breezy pop tune like “Lookin’ Over My Shoulder” and acting like it’s completely normal. The closest point of reference I can think of for The Basics in terms of sound would be Broken Social Scene, since both outfits have a penchant for experimenting with multiple styles of music and surprising their listeners with different tricks and song styles. However, whereas Broken Social Scene is a huge collective composed of at least a dozen members bringing a different genre to the table, The Basics happen to be three talented guy who display a clear love of pop music, but also love fucking with people’s expectations even more. After a short hiatus in 2010 where Wally found success overseas by teaming up with Kimbra and recording “Somebody That I Used To Know”, the group reunited in 2013 and have been touring and releasing great music ever since. I’ll admit it, I’m not the biggest Gotye fan on the planet, but De Backer’s work with The Basics is some of the most intriguing Australian music to be released in the 21st century.
6: Beasts Of Bourbon
Tex Perkins is something of an enigma amongst Australian musicians. In the span of half a century, the man’s fronted at least half a dozen bands, appeared on numerous television programs and even had a portrait of him win an Archibald Prize. Despite scoring a handful of hits in the early 90’s as the lead singer of Triple J favourites The Cruel Sea, my favourite period of the man’s was when he singing for the ass-kicking Sydney band, Beasts Of Bourbon back in the late 80’s. Beasts Of Bourbon took the heaviness of early 70’s Black Sabbath, the bluesy, rock ‘n roll swagger of AC/DC and mixed it in with the kind of garage rock sensibility that’d make The Stooges green with envy. The group’s 1991 album The Low Road is quite possibly one of the finest Australian albums from the decade, and “Chase The Dragon” still kicks all kinds of ass 24 years later. Tex’s throaty roar sends shivers down any man’s spine, while the rhythm section of Spencer Jones and Kim Salmon tear it up harder as any long haired metalhead could ever dream of. Supposedly, when Beasts Of Bourbon played the inaugural Big Day Out in 1992, they were the opening act for Nirvana. Henry Rollins, who was viewing the concert at the time claimed that he noticed Kurt, Dave and Krist all looking incredibly pale-faced and scared at Tex Perkins stage presence, wondering how on earth they were going to follow on from this titular beast of a band. Beasts Of Bourbon initially disbanded in 1993, while Tex found success fronting the indie rock outfit The Cruel Sea and spending his free time swimming in a sea of ARIA awards, when he wasn’t hosting RocKwiz or acting as Nick Cave’s backup singer/lighting technician. I managed to catch Tex last year when he toured with his current band The Dark Horses at the Tanks Amphitheatre in Cairns, and he sang a couple of Beasts Of Bourbon tracks. Over 20 years later, and that man can STILL bring the house down. So if you’re in the mood for some menacing, yet distinctly evil sounding music that skirts the boards between alternative rock and metal, give Beasts Of Bourbon a go someday. You shan’t be disappointed.
5: The Hard-Ons
While the UK was busy surrounding itself with street punk groups such as The Exploited and G.B.H, and the United States went for a more hardcore approach with acts like Minor Threat and Black Flag, Australians were left asking where the fun had gone in punk rock. Enter The Hard-Ons, a young group of upstarts from Punchbowl with a pimary-school sense of humor, who loved the Ramones and everything related to three chord pop punk goodness. The Hard-Ons picked up where The Saints and Radio Birdman left off, helping Oz punk rock to keep it’s sense of identity throughout the turbulent 80’s, remaining staunchly immature and regressive in the face of the new wave and post-punk era. Albums like Smell My Finger and Dickcheese ensured the artistically minded Melburnian types would have nothing to do with The Hard-Ons, however the band managed to develop an extremely strong cult following,that stretched past the groups hometown of Punchbowl. 1989’s Love Is A Battlefield Of Wounded Hearts made it into the top 10 in Spain and Greece, while rocketing into the NME top 5 in the UK, helping The Hard-Ons develop a better reputation overseas than they had in their own home country. They would later proveto be a huge influence on Australian punk bands to come in the following decades, with acts like Frenzal Rhomb and Bodyjar furthering the groups blistering surf-punk sound, while the guys in TISM carried on the bands warped sense of humor. Plus, their cover of “Let There Be Rock” with Henry Rollins on vocals completely blows the original out of the water.
4: Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue? “Surely you jest, she cannot be underrated”, you say. Over the course of her nearly 30 year career, Kylie’s managed to win a modicum of respect from critic and journalists, but it’s usually of the ironic variety, like the elephant in the room that demands to be addressed. As one of Australia’s biggest To many Australians, she’s still that canary-voiced blonde bimbo from Neighbours who fucked off to the UK and became a Stock, Aitken and Waterman puppet, peddling such dance-pop duds as “The Locomotion” and “I Should Be So Lucky”. It’s almost as if “Confide In Me”, “Where The Wild Roses Grow” and the entirety of Fever were total flukes, right? Unlike her contemporaries such as Jason Donovan and Rick Astley, who quickly faded into obscurity once the 90’s rolled around, Kylie broke out of the SAW trap and managed to strike gold on her own, and become one of Australia’s biggest exports in the process. But try telling that to Rolling Stone’s Australian centre and you’ll probably be laughed out of the building while desperate writers pelt you with Airbourne CD’s and spit in your face. I find it interesting how when acts such as Madonna or David Bowie reinvent themselves, it’s seen as “artistic maturation”, but when Kylie does it it’s viewed as “trend-hopping cash-in” (see: her collab with the Manic Street Preachers or her recent signing with Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella records). Admit it, you lose your shit whenever “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” comes on the radio and you might even enjoy it. If we keep this mentality of bands comprised entirely of white guys in skinny jeans and guitars being the only viable form of music, we get sucked into an echo chamber of endlessly derivative buzz-bands that contribute nothing to society and don’t make listners feel any particular emotions whatsoever. We need artists like Kylie to provoke strong reactions in people. If Australia’s musical canon was just composed of bland, vanilla bands like San Cisco and Icehouse, would we really be listening to music in the first place? No, we damn well wouldn’t, I doubt even Triple J themselves could counter that argument. Kylie’s proven she has the musical abilites to play with the best of them, if her collaborations with Nick Cave, Flight Facilities and the Pet Shop Boys prove anything, while she’s also shown to be an extremely capable pop singer in her own right. And come on, you’ve gotta admit that “Come Into My World” video was pretty cool.
3: Savage Garden
Kylie Minogue is one thing, but Savage Garden? If that’s not enough to negate every shred of credibility I’ve ever had, I don’t know what is. No matter what you think of the bands image, their look, you can’t deny that the duo of Daniel Jones and Darren Hayes were great pop songwriters. Savage Garden essentially took the template that groups such as Tears For Fears and Roxette had ran with the previous decade and updated it for the 90’s. Darren Haye’s soft falsetto combined with the group’s vaguely effeminate image (they named themselves after an Anne Rice novel) didn’t exactly endear them to the hordes of Spiderbait and Silverchair fanatics populating Australia at the time. I’ll admit, I’m not a huge fan of Affirmation,and the rather fluffy singles it spawned (although that video for “I Knew I Loved You” with Kirsten Dunst still brings a smile to my face), but the groups first album, Savage Garden, is basically a nonstop hit-parade of classic late-90’s pop rock. Tracks like “I Want You” and “To The Moon And Back” still sound damn great today and kin In spite of a less-than-stellar local reputation, Savage Garden managed to rack up five number one singles on the ARIA charts, with two of those (“Truly Madly Deeply” and “I Knew I Loved You”) going to number one on the Billboard charts. For an Australian act, that is an impressive achievement, not even AC/DC managed to pull that off. It’s one thing to write a breezy, three-chord folk song on a ukelele and be praised as a genius by Richard Kingsmill, it’s another to write a pop song that makes it into the Top 10 in America, then follow that up with two number ones. From the get go, there was no doubt that these guys were too big for Australia, you simply couldn’t keep pop songs this great locked down under. The duo’s self-titled album swept the ARIA awards back in 1997, beating out critical darlings such as Nick Cave, Paul Kelly and Crowded House in over 10 categories. It amazes me how INXS are considered one of the most important bands in Australian history, and yet these guys are treated as a total joke. Haye’s solo career might be a bit hit-and-miss, but you can’t deny that the duo’s work in the late 90’s
2: Pendulum
When it comes to dance music in Australia, we generally have a pretty blasé attitude towards the types of infectious grooves and 4×4 beats that other countries so keenly love. Australia never had its own Disco Demolition Night like the United States did, but we’ve never exactly produced many top-tier producers and acts of our own like the Europeans have either. We were totally cool with house, eurodance and big beat storming the charts in our country, but their weren’t a whole lot of Aussie producers getting major national attention in the 90’s. It wasn’t until about 2005, when a couple of boys from Perth by the name of Pendulum The group’s 2005 debut album Hold Your Colour broke Pendulum into the United Kingdom, selling over 225,000 copies and peaking at 29 in the UK albums chart. Producers such as Wave Racer, The Presets, Sneaky Sound System and Knife Party (ironically composed of former Pendulum members Rob Swire and Gareth McGillan) would likely not have blown-up had it not been for Pendulum making dance music a viable option for Australian producers. Pendulum helped bring drum and bass to the type of commercial prominence not seen since Goldie dropped “Inner City Life”. Tracks such as “Tarantula” and “Fasten Your Seatbelt” showed Pendulum had respect for drum and bass, but were keen on moving the genre forward as well. Despite this, Pendulum have been criticized heavily over the years for what many percieve to be the band’s so-called “commercialisation” of drum and bass. (multiple songs of theirs have been licensed for video games, commercials and movie trailers). For better or worse, Pendulum were directly responsible for dance music gaining a massive foothold in Australia in the years succeeding their debut. The past decade has seen multiple Australian producers take up the EDM charge, with producers such as Timmy Trumpet and Will Sparks going on to great success here and abroad, and to be honest, I doubt those acts would’ve been able to conquer the charts had it not been for Pendulum helping pave the way. Say what you will about Immersion, but it’s hard to deny Pendulum’s place within Australian music.
1: The Go-Betweens
Queensland is an important state in regards to Australia’s music evolution. Multiple bands, ranging from The Bee Gees to The Saints have helped shape the direction of Australia’s musical heritage in their own unique ways, but no band is more important than The Go-Betweens. In the mid-80’s, alternative rock in Australia was just beginning to take form. Bands such as Perth’s The Triffids and Sydney’s The Church were shaping the Aussie underground with their jangly, alt-pop tunes that hearkened back to the folk rock of the 60’s, while remaining firmly planted in the post-punk era. However, it would ultimately be Brisbane’s The Go-Betweens who would lead the charge of and bring the jangle pop sound into the charts. Australia’s music scene in the mid-80’s was incredibly dire, filled with meat headed pub rock bands such as Rose Tattoo and The Choirboys who would scoff at the kind of introversion and reserved nature displayed by The Go-Betweens. It was this attitude that caused The Go-Betweens, along with fellow acts such as The Birthday Party and Dead Can Dance to leave the country and seek success overseas. The interplay between Grant McLennan’s soft and rather sensitive approach, and Robert Forster’s deep and straightforward outlook contributed greatly to the band’s appeal. Songs such as “Cattle and Cane” and “Streets Of Your Town” ring true to anyone from the sunshine state, and the band’s beautifully jangly alternative pop sound put them up there with The Smiths and R.E.M. in terms of 80’s alternative icon. In many ways, the dual relationship between McLennan and Forster and their subsequent output was like Brisbane’s equivalent to Lennon-McCartney in terms of songwriting partnerships.
Albums like Before Hollywood and Liberty Belle and The Black Diamond Express showed the band finding their feet and experimenting with their approach, but the band’s 1988 album 16 Lovers Lane is arguably the peak of their evolution as artists. Displaying a fine balance between a commercial radio sound, while retaining the idiosyncrasies that made their early work so great, The Go-Betweens showed they could play with the big boys and yet still keep their own identity, without being forced to change their sound to gain attention. Sadly however, the band never got a huge amount of attention in their lifetime in Australia. Despite strong critical reception from NME in the UK and MTV’s 120 Minutes program in the U.S., The Go-Betweens seemed forever doomed to obscurity in Australia, only gaining slight airplay via Countdown and being almost entirely ignored by Triple J. However in the late 90’s, bands ranging from the effete Scottish power poppers Teenage Fanclub, to the Portland punk rockers Sleater-Kinney were all quick to namedrop The Go-Betweens as a direct influence on their music, showing how like many other underrated bands, they found success beyond the home country. Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein stated in an NPR blog that “In some ways, it’s easiest to say that [they] were Australia’s best pop group”, while Teenage Fanclub not only namedropped the band in one of their songs, but also toured with Robert Forster and contributed to a tribute album entitled Love Goes On! A Tribue To Grant McLennan and The Go-Betweens. The Go-Betweens showed that Australians could play with the best of them, and still come out victorious. They’ve even got a bridge named after them in Brisbane, how many other bands could lay claim to that? McLennan may have passed on from this world, but The Go-Betweens music shall live on, no matter what.
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Fall Out Boy. I’m one of those people who believe that their early albums are fantastic, with Take This To Your Grave being some damn good pop punk and From Under The Cork Tree a masterclass in mainstream emo-pop. They’ve fallen off a bit in recent years (Save Rock And Roll was pretty embarrassing, you’ve gotta admit), but their older material is incredibly good. Today I thought I’d review their first proper album Take This To Your Grave
It’s astonishing how assured of themselves they sound on this album. Take This To Your Grave sounds much slicker than any pop punk debut has the right to be. Think The Get Up Kids with less synthesizers or Taking Back Sunday with more of a pop sheen and you’ve got Fall Out Boy’s sound down pat. Compared to most other bands on Fueled By Ramen at this point, you could tell these guys weren’t gonna spend their lives kicking around the emo-pop ghetto. Speaking of which, their background was slightly different from the majority of floppy fringed midwestern kids topping TRL at this point. I was surprised to learn that Pete Wentz played in several hardcore punk and metalcore bands throughout Chicago, prior to starting Fall Out Boy as an “escapist side project” in his own words. Patrick Stump was even a drummer for a local grindcore (!) band before joining Pete on their quest for pop stardom and Warped Tour success.
And at this point in their career, they were sure as hell willing to experiment more than most other Pop Punk groups. The screamo-esque background vocals in “Saturday” and “Calm Before The Storm” for instance, or the looping guitar feedback in the end of “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago” are probably about as far as they got, but that’s probably more than you can say for than the glut of Saves The Day wannabes Drive-Thru Records and Fueled By Ramen were signing at the time. “Reinventing The Wheel To Run Myself Over” sounds like it could be a Lifetime song, for christ’s sake (I’ve always got fond memories of hearing that song in Burnout 3). When Patrick cries out “As when you wrap your car around a tree, your makeup looks so great next to his teeth” in “Tell That Mick He Just Made My List Of Things To Do Today”, it sounds like a typical emo cliche. But it’s delivered with such confidence and vigour that you can’t help but be captivated by it. “Dead On Arrival” has one of the cheesiest choruses ever. “This is side one, flip me over, I know I’m not you’re favourite record” “So I’m writing you a chorus,” and here is your verse”. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to hear on a Sum 41 album, but the guitar riffs are so loud and entrancing, that you fail to notice it amongst all the clatter.
The production on Take This To Your Grave was sure to aggravate all the “tru punx” from the very beginning. If people thought Blink-182 sounded too pop-oriented, wait until you hear the mixing on this album. It’s the kind of thing that ensured Fall Out Boy would rocket up the Billboard charts in the future, and ensure all the sex drugs and rock and roll their future held. Not surprising at all once you find out they recorded it at Butch Vig’s Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, the same place Nirvana recorded Nevermind at. Fall Out Boy were only following in the footsteps of prior bands who’d crossed over from underground success to global stardom.
If Fall Out Boy had broken up shortly after the release of this album, Take This To Your Grave would be viewed in a much different light. Perhaps as a document of the tipping point in the pop punk/emo canon, when the dam was just about to break and hordes of long fringed boys in black eyeliner and white belts were poised to take over the mainstream. Instead, they ended up becoming the poster boys for the nascent Hot Topic emo scene of the mid-2000’s, and the favourite band of every angsty, problematic, wrist-slitting teenage girl with a MySpace account (Also, they brought Panic! At The Disco into this world, so I can never forgive them for that) But when all is said and done, we can’t fault them for this killer debut album. If you’re ever feeling angsty and want some mood music to vibe with, give this classic a spin. You won’t regret it, honest. Just try not to put any guyliner on your face while doing it.
Patrick's Music Reviews 