Cosmic Psychos

The Cosmic Psychos: 40 years of drinking, fighting and roadkill

Music / / 6 minutes of reading

Ross Knight – bass player, singer and mainstay of Australian punk heroes the Cosmic Psychos – tells a good yarn that deftly illustrates his group’s public image.

The Psychos, who are celebrating 40 years since their humble beginnings in central Victoria as a school band originally named Rancid Spam, were unlikely guests of honour at the Australian embassy in Berlin in 2013, commemorating 60 years of friendship between Australia and Germany. The band had driven all night from Utrecht in the Netherlands, arriving in Berlin about 3am. Of course, they found a bar before rolling up to the embassy a few hours later, very much the worse for wear.

As they slid open their van’s side door, beer cans spilled out, rolling towards the assembled dignitaries like unexploded mortar shells. The band followed the cans into the light, blinking, Knight dressed in Blundstones, jeans and a Yakka shirt and their guitarist, John “Mad Macka” McKeering, in a tracksuit.

“We were standing next to generals and majors and ambassadors and goodness knows who else, going, ‘Bloody hell, how did this happen?’” Knight says, chuckling.

The Cosmic Psychos are an Australian institution. Sounding like the Ramones fronted by the Crocodile Hunter, they write songs in a distinctly local vernacular about drinking, fighting, roadkill and punching above your weight.… Read more..

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The Chats: Get Fucked

Music / / 3 minutes of reading

Let’s start with the title. The Chats don’t care what you think, and even less (I hope) what the Guardian thinks. This band did not give a continental about what Karl Stefanovic thought when they ran around the set of the Today Show. This is entirely as it should be for a reprobate punk band from Pig City, aka Brisbane (via the Sunshine Coast).

That said, there are some signs of growing pains on Get Fucked, the follow-up to 2020’s High Risk Behaviour. In some ways, this album is to the Chats what Leave Home was to Ramones: it’s tighter, with better playing and a tougher sound, but lacks some of the naive charm that made their debut so endearing. They have also lost guitarist Josh Price, and he takes a little of the Chats’ humour with him.

New Josh (Hardy) is a killer, though. His playing sets fire to Struck By Lightning and Panic Attack, songs that crackle with all the nervous energy of their titles. The singer and bass player, Eamon Sandwith, stretches out a bit more lyrically, too, reminding us that, at the height of the Black Summer bushfires, he gave us the Christmas in Hawaii song I Hope Scott’s House Burns Down.… Read more..

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Amyl & The Sniffers: Comfort To Me

Music / / 3 minutes of reading

Anger, as the punk formerly known as Johnny Rotten put it, is an energy. For Amy Taylor, singer for Melbourne band Amyl & The Sniffers, it’s a renewable resource. “It’s my currency,” she tells us on Guided By Angels, the rip-roaring opener from the band’s second album, Comfort To Me. An electric performer, Taylor crackles like a live wire with too much current running through it.

 

One can only imagine what Melbourne’s long lockdown, and not being able to perform, has done to the psyche of someone like Taylor. Comfort To Me gets it all out in an eruption that’s more intense, and much less playful, than their self-titled debut from 2019. Taylor’s voice is defiantly flat, yet more powerful – like a poetry slammer fronting the Cosmic Psychos, the Sniffers’ spiritual forebears.

In Taylor’s words, she’s a “little bit classy, bit of a rat”. But she’s no cartoon figure, and the lowbrow profanity of a song like Don’t Need A Cunt Like You To Love Me is no joke. Like much of Comfort To Me, it’s an expression of independence and confidence. “I’m a businesswoman, run my own company,” she spits. The Sniffers swing furiously behind her in defence: “She’s 10 out of 10 / You’re so-so / You think you can fuck with her?… Read more..

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The Great Australian Songbook II (40-31)

Music / / 6 minutes of reading

As promised from yesterday. I’ve tried to cover as many bases as possible in terms of decade and genre, avoiding multiple selections for the same artist.

Without further ado, here’s the list from 40 to 31.

40. COSMIC PSYCHOS – Lost Cause (1988)

It was Spinal Tap who pointed out the fine line between clever and stupid. In Australia, you won’t find three smarter beer-swilling yobs than The Cosmic Psychos. This isn’t a song about punching above your weight – it’s about being out of your weight division entirely. “Dr” Ross Knight, the band’s bass player, is a farmer from outside Bendigo who’s been known to cancel tours when his tractor breaks down. At the time he wrote this song, he was working part-time in the medical records department of a local hospital, where he fell under the spell of an attractive young lady who’s “only 19, not a has-been!” “I was about 25, 26 at that point, a bogan fucking pisshead,” Knight recalls. “I said to a mate of mine, ‘I wouldn’t mind taking her out,’ and he goes, ‘Nah – have a look at you! She’s a lost cause, mate!” The song was later covered by L7 and The Prodigy.… Read more..

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