February 11, 2006
IN all the talk of an Australian-led rock revival in which the likes of the Vines, Jet and now Wolfmother have broken through internationally, one crucial thing has been left unsaid - how second-rate these and other local new rock bands are when it comes to theirlyrics.
To quote Bob Dylan, "he not busy being born is busy dying". The fact is we're dying fast when it comes to articulating who we are in music today.
Ironically enough, Jet's smash debut album Get Born, which took its title cue from the same Dylan song It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), is a flag-bearer for the sound of dumb Australia. As appealing as Jet may be, the group's rehashing of retro sounds for an international market is part of a generic flattening of quality, identity and particularity across the local scene that makesa phrase such as Oz Rock tragically absurd.
Jet's breakthrough hit Are You Gonna Be My Girl was an undeniably catchy song - and a notable offender in this increasingly globalised and diluted direction. The song's riff reflected Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, over which the reptilian Igster spat out lines inspired by his own extreme ability to survive and recharge himself, with brilliantly sarcastic throwaways about "a gimmick" called love. "Well that's like hypnotising chickens," Pop sneered in the original.
Content merely to hypnotise those chooks (aka the public), Jet's toned-down and tamed variation was about as advanced as changing the words of Like A Rolling Stone to "I wanna hold your hand." That we had to suffer through it as the jingle to not one but two advertisements - Apple's iPod, then Vodafone - says as much about Jet's vision as anything else: instantly likeable, utterly pulpable, happy to blow before any wind that pushes them forward.
The Vines, probably the most gifted of all the bands to ride the new wave of Aussie rock'n'roll, have proved themselves to be similarly inane.
Most of Craig Nicholls's words come over like some high-school student's jottings, mushy dollops of anger and aloneness that don't add up to anything coherent and have more to do with presenting a pose than whatever might be the true force behind them.
At a concert at the Metro in Sydney in late 2004, when the band was at its height, I was struck most of all by Nicholls's amazing voice, the sheer bigness of the band's self-image and its cinematic projection on to the audience - as well as the fact I had never seen so much talent with so little to communicate in all my life. If the Vines's lyrics suffer from timidity in the disguise of edginess, then Wolfmother seem intent on taking the post-hippie, heavy-rocking cake all the way to Narnia and never coming back.
Antecedents such as Led Zeppelin and T-Rex (and God save us, Uriah Heep) may not have been the William Blake and John Keats of their time when it comes to their words, but Wolfmother sure make them look that way -- "when I see the apples feed the skies, all my love I can't recognise" dropping down on our heads with something like Newtonian force when Wolfmother hit the stage. Some people will argue that rock'n'roll has always been about this dumb, semi-articulate energy, endlessly recycled.
That it has always been rooted in testosterone, lust, volume, love and hate at the most raw levels. Basic. Primitive. A lifeline where the beat is all and teenage style a crass affectation giving the whole medium its colour, verve, and chaotic invention. Well I can buy all that, to a point, sure. But even on that score I'd rate Bon Scott's lyrics for AC/DC way ahead of this new gang, for wit, brutalness and a colloquial intimacy with the true language of the street.
Australia does have a great tradition of lyrically intelligent rock'n'roll from the raw outlaw shove of AC/DC and early Rose Tattoo, through Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, the Birthday Party, Hunters and Collectors, the Triffids, the Cruel Sea and You Am I, right up to Powderfinger today.
That last reference might seem to contradict the argument, and some could also flag John Butler and Magic Dirt and no doubt plenty of other local acts as well for their lyrical intelligence.
But really, the three bands named and attacked here represent the leading edge of our so-called international invasion and what appears to be its hippest quotient. They're the ones who hold the most heat, if you like - the most eloquent sense of the moment we live in and how it's defined, as have all the great Australian bands in their own way and day. Yet when you look at the honour roll, the overwhelming feeling isn't of a grand succession when these new names are tacked on, but more a compromise, a weakening, that makes one embarrassed.
It looks even more unfortunate when American contemporaries such as the Strokes, White Stripes and Kings of Leon so clearly tower over the Australian acts, lyrically and musically.
Maybe it's hard to blame our bands when they spring from a culture where a cool but nasty consumer magazine such as Vice is regarded as radically satirical, while reading the labels on Tsubi jeans has become the height of seriously Beat rebellion. It certainly explains why these bands sound less like real rock'n'roll at times than an advertisement for it.
In that sense Elton John's praise for Jet as "a brilliant pastiche" was right on the money in more ways than it would like to admit.
The truth is we're kidding ourselves if we think the Vines, Jet and Wolfmother come even close to greatness in their present form. News that Jet had a new song called I Only Like You When I'm High hinted at an edge, but then the real news was they wouldn't worry their record company by putting it on their next album. Wolfmother continue "to write songs about unicorns", as Bernard Fanning of Powderfinger put it - in his usually backhanded way - recently on Triple J live broadcast.
The Vines, meanwhile, are back in the studio after Craig Nicholls's endless round of tantrums and unpredictable behaviour allegedly culminated in him assaulting a female photographer on stage, leading to a breakdown and what looked like the end of the band in 2005, along with the diagnosis that he suffers from Asperger's syndrome.
Strangely enough, it's out of this region of erratic behaviour, social disgrace and long-term treatment that I sense the material for something great to occur. Nicholls now really has a few things to say - if he dares to.
-The Weekend Australian
11 February 2006
