Much as we tend to look to the States and Britain's Medway delta for the best in supercharged garage rock, only a terminal fool would ignore the influence our Australasian cousins have had in this area over the past 30 years or so. Hell, to forget Australia and New Zealand would be to gloss over a rumbling. brakeless juggernaut stuffed full of high-octane delights by bands such as The Saints, The Lime Spiders, The Celibate Rifles, Eastern Dark, The Hoodoo Gurus, The Someloves, Died Pretty, The D4, The Screaming Tribesmen etc etc. Actually, I wouldn't suggest pushing your reviewer too hard on this particular point, as you could find your ear bent especially hard over a long period of time.
However much these bands continue to make your reviewer foam at the mouth, though, you may well have noticed one glaring omission in the above paragraph. You got it yet? Yeah, thought so. I didn't mention maybe the Daddy of them all: Radio Birdman, did I? And to omit the legendary RB would be to deny records as ferocious and thrilling as "Radios Appear" and "Living Eyes". And there's really no excuse for that now, is there?
Thing is, the Radio Birdman story gets better when you consider singer and mainstay Rob Younger's major extracurricular activity, the magnificent NEW CHRISTS: a band whose ever-shifting, on-off line-ups have included the likes of Kent Steedman (Celibate Rifles) Richard Jakimsyzyn (Lime Spiders), Bill Gibson (Eastern Dark/ Cosmic Psychos) in the past, as well as originally taking shape from a band Younger former to tour supporting Iggy Pop involving two little-known geezers called Ron Asheton (Stooges) and Dennis Thompson (MC5).
So pedigree's never been a problem, but Younger's intermittent activity with Radio Birdman and lots more has ensure that The New Christs' recording history is rather chequered. They made a series of unbeatable singles in the mid 1980s (now collected on the "Divine Rites" CD if you can seek it out), but it took until 1989 for the band's debut proper "Distemper" to blink in the daylight.
Thing is, you'd be equally justified in choosing either of those albums as well as 1987's "Lower Yourself" when considering The New Christs back catalogue, but personally I'd work backwards from what currently stands as the last New Christs' album, 2002's searing, utterly unmissable "We Got This!"
On this album Younger was joined by an incendiary line-up of Mark Wilkinson (guitars), Alan Creed (guitar/ keyboards), Christian Houllemare (bass) and drummer Stuart Wilson and while it's true that The New Christs probably qualified for 'veteran' status by the time of this release, "We Got This!" puts most garage rock bands 20 years the Christs' junior to shame, such is the vicious intensity of their riffbound attack and their deliriously heavy delivery.
"We Got This!" is comprised of a generous 15 tracks over a frenetic sixty minutes. There aren't any ballads (don't make me laugh), wimp outs or acoustic tracks, just simply diamond hard garage-rock anthems played with the intensity of a dozen JCBs razing a large housing estate. Lovely stuff.
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The album kicks off with the cranked, circling vulture riffs of the crunching title track. The band are clearly in viciously good nick and Younger's cynical, but melancholy vocals and world-weary lyrics ("I was overwhelmed by an incredibly painful sadness/ across the street he was giving her one for me") are immediately shooting you through the throat.
The intensity rarely lets up from thereon in. Indeed, he fearsome opening sequence of songs alone also includes the snaky guitars and huge, Moon-esque drum detonations of "First Plane Home", the snarling guitar barrage of "Groovy Times" (where those sneaky synths make the first of several important appearances) and the quintessential Christs of the manic, jeering "He's Too Slow."
But really, it's more of a case of trying to cherry pick favourites after a while, and deciding whether you prefer the anthemic, fist-shaking chug of songs like "Spit It Out" and "I Deny Everything" or the edgy likes of "Nadir (Is It You?)" and "Sunny Day Sun" or the epic, death-or-glory aspirations of songs like "Sombrero" and "Intercourse".
Defiant as ever, they sign off with the bitter "The Party Died", where Younger spits "this shit is preordained, nobody makes it happen!" because he knows full well that the urge to play this exilarating, desperate and uncompromising music is something you're in for life, not something you can pick up for a few months while it's briefly in fashion again.
And, in a nutshell, that's Rob Younger's raison d'etre. In an interview a few years back, he spoke revealingly about what makes him tick and said "You sometimes get a bit of shit from people who are really young and in bands and thinking they've got this future ahead of them....but check those people out in a couple of years and see if they're still playing in groups after they get kicked around a bit. They'll be tomorrow's real estate agents, all of those bastards, that's what I find."
And Younger knows just what he's talking about, believe me. With both Radio Birdman and The New Christs, he continues to make vital, unbelievable rock and roll and work with people who know damn well they do this because they HAVE to do it and there are no half-measures. There is, of course, talk of "We Got This!" being The New Christs last will and testament. This reviewer can't really see that, but even if there isn't a third coming, these leper messiahs will have bequeathed us all an embarrassment of riches. Listen, learn and cherish.
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