Playlouder - Music is the Network

In September 2007, trendy kids down under Off The Hip records pulled their socks and zips up, and pumped out a fairly exhaustive 37 track 2CD slab of prime Antipodean garage rock, featuring suspiciously high volumes of bands on Off The Hip's roster, and most of which sounds exactly the same and obnoxiously dull. You do get pictures of boobies on each CD But to save you the bother of finding this out, here's a quick primer of Antipodean Screams, Vol II, from an uneducated listener.

1 Persian Rugs * St Peter's Infirmary Bridging the gap beteen 1965 and 2002. No later. Feature ex members of untrumpeted Antipodean heroes Hoodoo Gurus. Not good.

2 The Pink Fits * Dishwasher Blus As above, only it more like forgotten Creation no-marks One Lady Owner, although the first of presumable many tracks that sound like all four band members fighting over a microphone hanging in the centre of a barn, which is a nice image, even if it is aural pigswill.

3 The Shimmys * Highschool Honey Boring girls dressed as characters from Valley of the Dolls singing Walk Idiot Walk (one of about twenty songs here to use this exacty same guitar pattern) a la Pipettes. Awful

4 Johnny Casino and the Secrets * Keep On Keeping On. I Was initially put off this by a) the stupid moniker, b) the sub Gillespie/Ashcroft title, and c) the fact the singer looks like Sam Beam after too many sirloins. A pleasant surprise, all be it it a pleasant surprise that had trumpets, freestyle jazz drumming, a ridiculous accent and stayed two minutes past it's welcome.

5 The Mysterious Tapeman * Ace of Spades Not the Motorhead song, but unashamedly dire and tragic sludge through the 12 bar blues, stopping off to drop in some of the incidental music from 3rd Rock From the Sun inbetween each huff and drawl.

6 The Dolly Rocker Movement * Get Up and Go Go 3-chord pisspoor Bowie impersonation, although redeemed for several seconds by a lovely spirally upward ending, although otherwise without merit

7 Los Hories * Dead Town First song here that sounds like Blondie, although not in any conceivable way, 'garage rock'. Evidently the wrong standart of trousers, but this is alright, eventually passable as a Ramones D-side.

8 Straight Arrows * Can't Count Another song sung by rats in the middle of a shoebox, that really shouldn't try and do clever things like solos and surf guitar considering just how badly this is recorded.

9 Voodoo Savage and His Savages * Cave Girl Annoying short track that I genuinely thought was the coda to the above song, since it sounded near-identical and therefore bad.

10 The White Swallows * Wannabee Aha! the first song that could realistically be compared to The Datsuns, only with a singer that fancies himself as an anglophile, with erotic euphemisms about fruit. No thanks.

11 The Stoneage Hearts * Sick of You The Last Shadow Puppets! Alas no, this is another gang of hoodlums who've studied trendy garage rock by the book, and seen Oliver Stone's Doors biopic more than once.. Pathetically engineered ending too.

12 The Damned Evangelist * Damn You More three-riff "Wah wha wha come on come one!" dross followed by 12 bar blues "demi-riff". No vocals except "God Damn" shouted at various degrees of constipation.

13 The Unfuckable * Turkish Delight Oh great, more nasal-inflicted snarling accents like Mark E Smith. Bounces along merrily but is ultimately dreadful. False ending too, which is unforgiveable with music this throwaway.

14 The Molting Vultures * Hang Up Suspiciously plagaristic 'No More Heroes' orga, but some good old fashioned hoary 'you're a hang on!' lyrics about an unspecified "girl!" which reeks of dry humping and car ashtrays.

15 Wal Purges and the Werewolves * Going to the River Utterly forgettable. Like the aboe 14 songs, with any interesting element sucked out with a vaccuum, save the sound of the tape deck puking at the end.

16 The Sailors * Bury Your Problems Collectors item track that actually sounded like it was recorded in this decade, rather than intentionally retro, although it's more 60s spy-riff surf guitar spookiness that are ten a penny here.

17 Knife Fight * Out of the Window Hideous see-saw fuzzed up four note mess made by incredibly ugly people with no idea what makes a song good.

18 Lords of Gravity * Paranoid Mind Welcome to lazy street, this is the same, only using the 12 bar blues rather than the 3-chord schmooze. At least this one has a solo, so forgive them their sins.

1 The Stems * Move Me '07 Almost sounds like an acoustic guitar. I'm mistaken, but crisp, clear recording which would be a good thing except it highlights how boring, and limited the song and parent genre truly are

2 The Booby Traps * What a Guy Can't Do Garage songs fronted by girls are generally better than ones fronted by men - fact. This sounds like Jefferson Airplane.

3 The Tash Mints * Dog Tired Another one with what sounds like owls and pigeons crowing over the top of harmonica overindulgence, and obligatory 12 bar drivel

4 The Mess Makers * Discomfort Awful

5 Grande Cobra * Choke Can't believe it took this long to reach an anachronistic "1,2,3,4!" and some real gravel-voiced gurning, which makes a change from the hipster yelping. Probably the best thing so far here.

6 Mink Jaguar * You've Got The Answers Two in a row! This is Brilliant! Also the best example of Effort = quality, this is proper song that gets amped up to 12 and has a proper structure, and ridiculous choppy backing vocals, and breakdowns that would never have happened in 1968.

7 Digger and the Pussycats * I Want You Chorus bleated out like ugly homeless men who can't reach high notes. Typical three-chord riff which doesn't change AT ALL.

8 The Frowning Clouds * Dirty Girl Rubbish. No feedback or fuzz whatsoever, lyrics about a "dirty girl" and horrible jazz drumming. Really weedy, pointless. Sounds improvised. Sounds Fratellis.

9 The New Invincibles * Fist Moderately entertaining, but indistinguishable, although some QOTSA bass rumbles underly the "verses"

10 The Bloody Souls * Shitsville Another forgettable blast of predictability

11 Devil Dolls * Bring Me Down Britpop throwback opening gambit. I take back what I said about female fronted garage bands. This is also 4 minutes+ which is unforgiveable.

12 The Homicides * Babysitter Starts suspiciously energetic,. Four people grunting out vocals simultaneously, good party/pub band atmophere but really not worth committing to disc when you can go down the road and see any motherfucking chuffing this sort of thing again.

13 The Ripping Dylans * Kids There's that Datsuns riff again. This sounds recorded live, which I guess is what they WANT me to think, but it's really not a good thing, because this sounds incredibly unprofessional, recorded by a lazy arse band who really should get a fucking job.

14 The Elephant Gods * Take Me Away Garage meets ska, as ALL the brass comes out. "I remember, back in 1959" then some moaning about the 21st century not being much fun. Either too old for this, or too young to be authentic. Fail.

15 The Beach Chromers * Surfin' UFO Bizarre and spooky hybrid of 'Surfing USA' as the title suggests, and their own atonal nonsense. Qute good, althought utterly stupid.

16 Wrong Turn * Gelatin Pyramids Interesting attempt to throw in as many guitar solos as possible in the opening few bars, but this was massively dull..Amazing how many references to living "on the ground" and space and the sky and stuff these songs have

17 Thee Psycho Delmatics * Mr Brown Rubbish. Ends with sound of toilet being flushed, possibly with future career as millionaire rock stars inside.

18 Boss Christ * Party at Boss Christ's House Notgood. Indian strings, howling vocals, wasn't sure if this was a joke or not, it sounded like a George Harrison pisstake.

19 The Crusaders * She's So Good THE MOST OBVIOUS, TYPICAL BORING SONG OF THE LOT THAT HAS ALL THE ABOVE CRITICISMS AND MORE.

To save you even more trouble, the only good song listed above can be located here: http://www.myspace.com/minkjaguar