After some colourful YouTube videos that went viral and two acclaimed EPs, Dave Grohl/Iggy Pop-favoured Aussies the Chats’ “shed rock” debut blazes out of Queensland with a similar short, sharp shock to that delivered by punk pioneer predecessors the Saints 44 years ago. Perhaps these complex, bewildering times require another musical clearing of the decks, and singer-bassist Eamon Sandwith, guitarist Josh Price and drummer Matt Boggis certainly deliver that.
In the same way NME scribe Paul Morley observed that you could pack an entire Ramones album into the length of a single song by San Francisco drug rockers the Grateful Dead, the Chats are a similar exercise in perfectly honed brevity. None of the 14 songs are more than three minutes long, and several barely clock in at much more than a minute. The brawling attitude and upstart vibe are more than familiar from punk’s first wave. There are fleeting hints of Gang of Four’s choppy funkiness and there’s a certain kindred spirit with Melbourne rabble-rousers Amyl and the Sniffers or Dublin’s Fontaines DC. However, while originality isn’t the Chats’ forte, they have terrific tunes – and lots of them.
Dolly Parton famously observed: “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” And presumably it takes high musical skill to sound this gleefully dumb. They’re hardly virtuosos but not a second is wasted, from the chuggingly infectious basslines, biscuit-tin drums, brilliantly simple slashed riffs and speedily careering Wilko Johnson guitar runs. Meanwhile, beery Aussie pub poet Sandwith’s lyrics tackle modern subjects with wittily dorkish matter-of-fact clarity.
There are songs about the simple joys of pub grub (Pub Feed), doing runners from restaurants (Dine N Dash), the perils of internet drug deals (Identity Theft), Aussie heat (Stinker and Heatstroke) boredom-fuelled oblivion (Drunk and Disorderly) and even an experience with chlamydia (The Clap, which has a call and response chorus of “I’ve got the clap!”, “He’s got the clap!”). It may not be great art, but it is exhilarating, cheerily undemanding fun, something in scant supply at the moment.
