Eamon Sandwith - Notes from Pig City

The Chats: Get Fucked

Music / June 7, 2023 / 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..

The Wiggles’ generational crossover

Music / June 5, 2023 / 5 minutes of reading

Since forming in 1991, Australian children’s group the Wiggles have pretty much seen it all. They’ve created a vast discography spanning 59 studio albums alone: last year, they were the second-highest streamed Australian act on Spotify across all genres.

In their heyday, the original group performed to more than 1 million people a year. More recently, they’ve noticed something new: a generational crossover. Their fans have grown up, many have formed their own bands – and they’re still fans.

This became obvious in 2018, when Brisbane hard rock duo DZ Deathrays invited guitarist Murray Cook to guest in their video Like People. In the clip, a demonically possessed Cook emerges from a bathroom stall and appears to be taken over by his former character, Red Wiggle.

Later that year, Cook (who retired from live performances with the Wiggles in 2012, along with original Purple Wiggle Jeff Fatt) appeared with DZ Deathrays at the Splendour in the Grass festival. The audience went totally Apple And Bananas.

This set the stage for last year’s all-conquering cover of Tame Impala’s Elephant, for which Cook returned. It went on to win the country’s biggest music poll, the Triple J Hottest 100.

“I just started noticing I was getting stopped in the street a lot by 20-somethings saying ‘the Wiggles were my childhood, you guys are legends!’”… Read more..