Classic Rock - Motor Head (2019-07)

Psychedelic

Porn Crumpets

And Now For The

Watchamacallit MARATHON

Thrilling third album from

Perth psychonauts.

Drunkenly

googling these

Antipodean

scallywags’

name might

lead to something more mind-

boggling than you’d hoped for,

but these latest arrivals on the

Oz-rock conveyor belt are well

worth the risk. Recorded between

mainman Jack McEwan’s

bedroom and Tone City Studios

in Perth, their third album is

a blast from start to finish.

So while McEwans’ quirky

narratives about continent-

hopping high jinks (Bill’s

Mandolin) techno paranoia

(Hymn For A Droid) and boozy

nights out (Social Candy) might

come with the hallucinatory feel

of fellow travellers Pond and

King Gizzard, they’re delivered

with a wind-tunnel ferocity

neither of those can equal.

Equally, while there are obvious

nods to bands ranging from Syd

Barrett-era Floyd (My Friend’s

A Liquid) to Blue Cheer (When In

Rome), sunbaked groove Digital

Hunger points the way to

a future direction all of their own.

The result is enough to refresh

the palate of even the most

jaded garage-rock fan.

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Paul Moody

King Hobo

Mauga WEATHERMAKER

Clutch and Beggars join forces

for a second riff-off

Eleven years is

a long time in

politics; in the

world of loose-

limbed stoner

rock, not so much. King Hobo,

a collaboration between Clutch’s

powerhouse drummer Jean-Paul

Gaster and Swedish polymath

Per Wiberg (Spiritual Beggars/

Kamchatka), sounded like an

inspirational jam session back

on 2008’s self-titled debut. And,

happily for all concerned, not

a vast amount has changed in

the interim.

With Wiberg on bass and now

Kamchatka’s Thomas

Andersson on guitar, and both

contributing gritty vocals, the

band sound ever so slightly more

focused on the breezily

thunderous likes of Hobo Ride

and Move To The City, but this is

still a red-eyed, boozy riot. The

blues blazes away morbidly at

the heart of this stuff, but there’s

Stray Cats

40 SURFDOG

proto-doom edginess

everywhere, particularly on the

woozy Grand Funk thud of

Dragon’s Tail. Meanwhile, Twilight

Harvest is like a Sabbath, Miles

Davis and Isaac Hayes’ Shaft

theme smoothie, with space

rock sprinkles. Hell yeah.

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Dom Lawson

The Membranes

What Nature Gives...

Nature Takes Away

CHERRY RED

John Robb’s enduring outfit

deliver in spades.

The Membranes’

latest album is

a brooding

gothic (small

‘g’) masterpiece,

shot through with melancholia

and desire, loss and wonder.

Nature plays a huge part, as

does death – as frontman John

Robb and the choir chant

repeatedly on the inspirational

title track: ‘What nature gives,

nature takes away’.

Guitars menace and scour, like

all the best bits of the 80s (Sonic

Youth, UT) rolled into one.

Feedback threatens to destroy

melody but never does. On Deep

In The Forest, Robb sings off-mic

to great effect, overcome with

emotion. Those guitars! That

welter of sound! And

throughout, Robb’s bass

thundering through like the

bastard offspring of The

Stranglers and Big Black.

The album is amazing in its

consummate violence and

beauty, but it’s the 20-piece

choir that lifts it into another

realm altogether, into colouring

and harmonising, seething and

brimming with gorgeousness.

After nearly four decades, The

Membranes have released their

greatest record.

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Everett True

Nebula

Holy Shit HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS

More shoulder shrug than

ecstatic exclamation.

Look, this isn’t

a bad album.

But... well, we’ve

heard it all

before – and

from Nebula.

A decade after their last

album, 2009’s Heavy Psych, the

trio are still treading the same

ground, mixing late-60s

Californian-tinged psychedelia

with early-70s British space rock.

Of itself this is not a problem;

Nebula have their style and stick

to it. The trouble is that here it all

No midlife crisis for the reunited

rockabilly kingpins.

T

here’s a glorious denial of passing

time about the Stray Cats.

Oblivious to fashion, impervious

to zeitgeist, the New York rockabilly trio

operate in such a bulletproof cultural

bubble that humanity could be living on

Mars with bionic eyes and the band would

still be skittering through songs about hot

rods, jukeboxes and duck’s-arse quiffs.

Even for a band that pays little attention

to clock and calendar, it’s something to

celebrate that founder members Brian

Setzer (guitar/vocals), Lee Rocker (upright

bass) and Slim Jim Phantom (drums) are

alive and operational four decades after

forming in Long Island and ram-raiding

the British rock scene. And their new

album, 40 , isn’t about to spoil the

anniversary with anything as contentious

as an artistic reinvention.

A quarter-century after their last studio

album – and a decade since the trio played

together – this record is a renewal of vows

(read: more of the same). The vibe will be

instantly familiar to anyone who’s dipped

a toe in their back catalogue; well-worn

rockabilly tropes abound. But it’s a credit

to the line-up’s combustible chemistry –

they tracked the album live on the floor in

Nashville – and Setzer’s twinkle-in-eye

storytelling that these songs feel fresh and

often thrilling.

As such, while Cat Fight (Over A Dog

Like Me) screeches in on a familiar

Gretsch double-stop riff, there’s huge

fun to be had from this tale of two

‘champagne blondes’ brawling in a diner

parking lot (‘Stiletto heels, throwin’ down/

Those girls took it on to the ground’). Rock It

Off won’t blow any musicologists’ minds,

either, but it’s difficult to resist this wiry

lurch, with its lyric about music being

the best medicine (‘You don’t need no tea

and honey, you don’t need no pills – you got

rock it off!’)

I’ve Got Love If You Want It is driven by

punched-up riffing and an Elvis croon.

I Attract Trouble offers a Duane Eddy

rumble, and surf guitar flourishes from

a great lost Tarantino movie. The

instrumental Desperado openly references

Hank Marvin’s tremulous lines on The

Shadows’ Apache, while the punky

grumble of I’ll Be Looking Out For You

perhaps speaks of Phantom’s stint with

Lemmy in The Head Cat.

40 is probably a touch too long, and on

tracks like Three Times A Charm and That’s

Messed Up even the band’s dynamite

playing can’t hide the fundamentally

derivative format. But if this is the sound

of middle-age, then there’s hope for us all.

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Henry Yates

RUS

S (^) H
ARR
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