Reboot
Until Number Two Loinfruit bought the new Green Day CD last week (which ain’t at all bad, incidentally), the soundtrack to our vacation was provided by a local-product CD about which I propose now to scribble at length.
First the nostalgic bit. An evening’s swing of a pub door in the Hobart of the late seventies would assail passers-by with a pulse of super-heated Winfield smoke and a thunderclap of punk (the Reserves, the Waste or Mr X), pop (the Shape), or rhythm and blues (the Tiger Band or the Blues Cats). At least, so am I told, for I never passed by. Hobart rocked in them days, and so did Yours Sentimentally.
Anyway, there’s been a band doing the
rounds ever since want of gainful employment dragged me from Tassie’s
lustrous shores and they’re called
Hey Mook.
And Hey Mook have to be
good, because they boast an ex-Reserve (Kim Pearce) and two ex-Wasters
(Paul Riley and Robbie
McIntyre). So I bought their brand new CD to find out what punks sound like after a quarter of a century has had a go at ‘em.
As gorgeous, lyrical, smooth, wistful, poignant, melodic, memorable and addictive a record of mid-life-in-the-small-city as I’ve had the good fortune to hear is what.
After the first three numbers, you might not be sure it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but you’re sure hopeless regret hasn’t sounded this good since ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling". I especially liked Paul Riley’s plaintive poppery and Kim Pearce’s wry-sweet guitar on “Half Way to Mars". The change-of-pace number is “I Signed A Heartbeat". It’s the first single, for mine. Lovely bit of work by the Horns of Dilemma and a driving chunk of hypnotic guitar to go out on. Then back to melodic wistfulness, frustration and soulful bleakery. Of which - the Dear Reader will know - I just can’t get enough. “$50 haircut” (the second single) finishes the set off with a nice garnish of bitterness and then it’s a few seconds of silence while you reach for the restart. Very polished - if perhaps one rocker short of the perfect set - and a dead-set ‘doyaselfafavour’ vacation-enhancing ripper, I reckon. I can’t imagine myself filleting a flathead to anything else now, and I now find it goes tolerably well with a Ballantines beyond thirst and The (erstwhile) Amigos’ “No Time to Rhumba", too.
Hobart still rocks.
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