Prior to the night, Tom Ellard of Severed Heads declared in The Herald, “All the people involved in this battle for something a bit more interesting in music have got to pull together for this particular event.”
A melodramatic statement, with a grain of self-interest no doubt, but nonetheless one founded in truth. In the early 80s it became apparent that instead of the underground subverting the mainstream, exactly the reverse was happening. Whilst the so-called ‘underground’ appeared to languish, the mainstream began to incorporate formerly experimental techniques and bands into popular idioms with a fury. As perhaps a delayed reaction to punk and certainly a development from the dance floor, the barriers between underground and mainstream blurred along with the rapidly encroaching fashion/style consciousness propelling us into the Face Age, an era of hip eclecticism where one can now comfortably enjoy opposites like the Rockmelons and Nick Cave, Aretha Franklin and PiL, tonality and atonality, melody and noise, pleasure and politics, order and anarchy. The truth being that these things are not necessarily opposing forces at all.
However the force of the pendulum has definitely swung in the direction of fashion, commerciality, easy digestibility, ‘pop’, comfort and a more conservative climate after some exciting chart and dance breakthroughs. The times are due for a change if for no other reason than people are fucking bored, and fortunately there are performers around able to meet the challenge. Ironically, some of the best new music has been associated with the revival of rock as a genre (notably in the case of American independents), though this has its equally inherent dangers of atavism and reaction. But ultimately it’s time for going underground again, without rejecting pop and rock, to search for the new: going underground in Sydney in search of bands like I’m Spartacus; the Hip Slingers, Maestros And Dipsos, Craven Fops…
.. And bands such as FAMOUS, a quirky, Smiths-like concoction of pop-gone-strange. Fronted by Patrick Gibson (formerly of bands such as the Systematics, No Night Sweats and Moral Fibro), Famous exudes a gawkily relaxed mood of weirdness and accessibility. Gibson is dressed as Jungle Jim, from the hat right down to the Dr-Livingstone-l-presume shorts (and boy, does he have nobbly knees!). Opening up with a near unrecognisably paced-up and rhythmically fractured version of the
Velvet Underground’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, they also do a fine cover of Beargarden’s recent single, The Finer Things -a reflection of their interest in the classical blended with the bizarre. Likewise their song Gilligan’s Wake, described as a lyrical meeting of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and Gilligan’s Island (a TV series not written by James Joyce). There’s also the Tapping Happening, three tap-dancing girls who almost steal the show. It’s all tongue-in-cheek, fun, effective and quite attractive guitar-based pop, marred at times by a certain smugness that the band could do better if it wanted to’. In other words, all the casualness is great but one gets the feeling (as with many Gibson projects) that he would rather fail cleverly than take the risk of showing how badly he might like to succeed. What a pity. There’s much more to this band than smart arse dilettantism – I just hope they think so too. For the moment, they often use humour to mask emotion rather than complement it.
Next up are SEVERED HEADS, a headline act who’ve had the rare intelligence to realise playing second would better suit them and do no damage to their status at all. And surely it’s better to play earlier to a more sober and alert crowd than stubbornly come on at 1.00 – 1.30 in the morning to an exhausted, drunken rabble? What Severed Heads deliver is virtually a video performance, technologically complex and impressive whilst at the same time almost childishly simple. It’s this strange embracing of contradictions through their commanding use of two media together on stage – music and video – that makes the Heads such stimulating entertainment. Musically they border on pleasant pop, melodic, even beautiful, with surges of latent power and noise bubbling through. Mostly, though, it’s the images that contain the provocation and disturbance so well harnessed to the seductive musical environment. Steven Jones’ ‘Heuristic Video’ (a six by six-feet screen) has developed from its early days of novelty and standard computer patterns into an impressive tool for techno-painting, as images, patterns and colours stream, intersect and overlay each other. Shifts from a frog’s groin to a graveyard to ice dripping heighten the subliminal tension, while Tom Ellard’s textured pop layers provide the theme music. The result is something both appealing and strange, and most certainly one of the uniquely arresting acts of substance and question currently happening.
It’s getting late, but even so, SCATTERED ORDER’s savage form is not to be denied, a physical antidote to Severed Heads’ cerebral wanderings. As they charge into their brand of gut-busting, brutalised pop-funk there’s a similar rush of blue and green minimalist lighting emphasising the severe moods. I find the early heaviness a little too demanding on the audience at this time of the night, and indeed the latter half of the set is biased towards more accessible material. But by the same token, songs such as Mass Murder are… well, mass murder. Mitch Jones uses a grossly distorted guitar as a rhythmic device and intensity absolutely erupts from the stage Scattered Order play a brilliant, if exhausting, set. Certainly every time I see them the tension between their mixture of funk, pop and discord grows ever-the-more impressive. Easily one of Sydney’s best bands, their collision of contradictory forces and raw delivery well complements Severed Heads’ control and strange, almost eerie blend of opposites.
MARK MORDUE