I've been listening to Scrabbled "Plough Through The Rust" on and off for the past couple of weeks. It's released through Hobart, Tasmania label Wormwood Grasshopper. The Bandcamp sidebar states that the label has been "sporadically releasing antipodean skuzz and clatter since 2011". There are only three releases available on Bandcamp, so I'm assuming the catalogue has more, but I can attest to two releases fulfilling the description. Scrabbled are based in Brisbane, Australia, and an earlier release from the label is from Cuticles, and they are from New Zealand. Both are scuzzy and clattery.
Each time I listened to Scrabbled I thought of Al Montfort. I actually thought this sounded like the type of music he would have made during his heyday (Russell St. Bombings, Total Control, Terry, UV Race). I also like that the Bandcamp page for the release mentions that the band sounds "like [the] Velvet Underground if they had been subject to the unrelenting heat, everyday abuse and suburban sprawl of heartland Australia".
Terry seemed like it might be a one-off when it bubbled up out of the primordial Melbourne soup in 2016. Formed by alliances between members of Total Control, UV Race, Eastlink, Mick Harvey Band and others (there have always been more band affiliations than members, because Australian punk is like that) and cemented by romantic relationships, it might easily have been the kind of band that popped up once and disappeared. “Whatever happened to Terry?” you might have asked around 2020. “Dunno, they’re all in different bands now,” someone might have replied. And that would have been a shame but not a surprise.
Instead, the band Terry has persevered through two years, two more EPs and now a second full-length. Its members—Al Monfort, Zephyr Pavey, Amy Hill and Xanthe Waite—are in more bands than ever. Hill has a new album with Constant Mongrel coming out this fall, and Waite just dropped one with Primo! this summer. And yet, they have time for another drawling, buzzing, primitively appealing set of Terry songs where stripped-bare bass rumbles jostle with sing-song-y melodies, and rackety, ricocheting drum clamor ping pongs around limpid puddles of indie lassitude. It’s a Messthetics for the new millennium, complete with wheedling, half-tuned keyboards and stream of consciousness lyrics. The first song, “Carpe Diem” consists almost entirely of foreign phrases that band members must have heard somewhere at least once. The second, “Bureau,” is about traffic, and if you suspect that that’s a metaphor for some larger theme, just watch the video. It’s all about traffic as well.
And yet, despite some rather simple melodies (and even simpler lyrics), or maybe even because of them, I’m Terry hits the mark. “The Whip” is the song that jumps out first. It bristles with raucous, just-short-of-chaotic energy, blistery guitar slashes, rambunctious drums and a chorus of “It’s a whip, whip,” in which the word “whip” somehow cracks and recoils exactly like its subject. Quick name one other song that’s an onamatopoiea. Gotcha, right?
It’s followed by the eerie, guitar-stung glamor of “Under Reign,” a song perceived as through a haze of cough syrup, the women’s chilly vocals juxtaposed with wires-exposed bass lines in a way that might remind you of Young Marble Giants. “Crimes” brings the bass even further to the front (that’s Amy Hill, by the way). It lumbers up and rumbles down a four note hill repeatedly, as chanted, all-hands verses drift and drone in the foreground. “Jane Roe” sounds a good deal like Manfort’s other band, UV Race, with its steady, slanted rain of guitar chords and denatured, de-melodicized vocal chorus, and Fortress takes it even further with spoke-sung asides. It sounds, late album, like the men and women of Terry might be running out of steam, but they rally in “For the Field,” a short, exhilarating rocker that could have gone twice as long and welcome to it.
You have to wonder what things are like in Melbourne, that people can have Terry as their third or fourth busiest project and still manage to put out four recordings in two years. Or that they can be as loose and casual as this record is and still manage to nail the songs right into the pavement. Must be nice, I guess. I’d like to visit someday.
I think Al Montfort should be up for knighthood. I would love to refer to him as Sir Al Monty.
But seriously his contributions to the Australia music scene cannot be overstated. While he gets a lot of recognition for Terry, Dick Diver and Lower Plenty, UV Race isn’t as well known these days.
Paradise Daily has released this behemoth cassette collection. UV Race can sound hardcore or acoustic and pensive. While, there are a myriad of Australian bands they can be compared to, I keep coming back to David Kilgour, and The Great Unwashed during the quieter and sometimes weirder moments.
There are a total of 33 songs here. I want to buy this just to see how much tape there is on this cassette.
Paradise Daily is a Sydney based label. I think UV Race are based in Melbourne.
