Dull town, dull sound
Various Artists - Kiss My WAMi 2008
(see the published version)
Everyone loves the dole, but welfare isn’t always a good thing. That’s one lesson to take out of Kiss My WAMi 2008, the latest installment of the West Australian Music Industry Association’s annual Perth tunefest. There’s other lessons too: for example, if you have to play shitty two-bit hardcore, at least come up with a better name than “Tengo Fuego”. But more on that stuff later. For now, I’d like to make a pitch to the WA government: the West Australian Music Industry Association (WAM) needs to work for the dole.
Seriously. Your average lazy bogan or mentally ill user has to dig a few holes and fill them up again for that precious fortnightly cheque, so why not the State Government funded WAM? An annual CD showcasing WA’s musical talent is a great idea in theory, but every year the damn thing gets more bloated, less focused, prettier on the outside but more rotten at the core, like a depressed, botox-happy doctor’s wife or the Victorian police force.
This year, Kiss My WAMi is a whopping three CDs plus music video DVD. We’re talking 75 songs from almost as many bands. Now, I’m a proud enough Perth boy, but let’s face it: there aint 70 great acts in Perth today. Not even close. For Perth people, that should be no cause for shame: Perth is a small town that’s managed to export some stellar acts in recent years. But there’s a strong sense of overcompensation about this compilation, in the vein of the faded signpost at the roadside edge of your standard provincial backwater which claims that said backwater grows the best beetroot in the world. The beetroot may be good, but too much of it will make you shit purple.
In any case, having more bands on this album than talent is a fundamental error, kind of like inviting fifty people over for a party and only supplying a carton of beer. But Kiss My WAMi 08 suffers from more than just bloating. Conceptually, the thing is confusing. It’s flogged on the inside cover in typically meaningless political wank as a promotion of “Western Australia’s contemporary music scene”, but the choice of acts ranges from arbitrary to sycophantic to really mediocre. And God knows who the audience is for this mutant.
I mean, to take a random example, what the fuck is John Butler Trio doing on this compilation? Is Australia so covetous of minor talents that we can’t admit that John Butler is an American? And hasn’t the guy lived in Byron Bay, a lazy 4000km from Perth, for most of his career? Perth people have to face the fact that John Butler had a stopover in Perth on his way from Cali to Byron two decades ago during which he happened to busk a bit in Freo. He aint West Australian, but worse, he’s filthy rich. Butler made more money than Shannon Noll in 2004, so it’s not an exaggeration to say that he could buy the virginity of the first born daughter of every other act on this compilation, with enough petty cash left over for mung beans and tofu from an overpriced Byron eatery. Note to WAM and the WA government: John Butler doesn’t need the promotion [blog edit: please see sickening Rolling Stone cover above].
There’s three other points of Kiss My WAMi 08 where exposed bands are flaunted seemingly for the hell of it, but they aren’t as egregious as John Butler’s inclusion. The Panics excellent “Get Us Home” gets a gig on CD 1, as does the Waifs “Stay” and Little Birdy’s “After Dark”. Now, normally the Waifs make me want to hop into the bath with a plugged in toaster, but it must be admitted that when they ditch the Aussie blues and roots masturbation and write a proper pop song, as they do here, they aren’t half bad. As to Little Birdy, the less said about them the better.
There’s a lot of bad spread over these four discs, so much that it’s probably unfair to single out certain bands. Perhaps the best way to explain it is to say that every significant genre which is represented gets the apprentice butcher treatment many times over. Hair metal veterans Voyager, for example, don’t translate well to tape, because without the sense of humour inherent in their live shows, there’s just a very sincere, highly embarrassing wad of cum-soaked tissues jutting from the dustbin. Streetlight play low-rent emo for fat teenage groupies. The Justin Walshe Folk Machine sound like a Goon-drunk yobbo taking a wet shit on Johnny Cash’s grave in broad daylight. The Silents sound like the Vines without Asperger’s syndrome: that is, poseurs without even a hint of credibility. The list goes on.
There’s stuff to like here, but the problem is that you have to wade knee deep through diseased floodwater to reach the small islands of listenable music. In that regard, stalwarts Red Jezebel provide a workmanlike track, as do Zombie-obsessed freaks Snowman. Eleventh He Reaches London unjustly suffer by being lodged between metal cliché machine Pyromesh and the unlistenable Tengo Fuengo, but their 10 minute track is nevertheless a standout. Rollerskates and Delta Forse both do what Aussie hip hop does best by laying down chilled out Sunday barbecue tracks, notwithstanding that the boys from Delta Forse sound like genetic clones of Perth hip hop progenitors Downsyde. New Rules for Boats are refreshingly good.
Here’s the point: there’s maybe one CD worth of good, fresh, creative music on this four disc beast. For those acts that make the cut, it’s just bad luck that they’re forced to share space with some real hacks. By taking such a liberal, kitchen sink approach to its annual compilation, WAM is just hurting good Perth artists and alienating its possible audience beyond Perth music scenesters. And I can’t get behind that.
Seriously. Your average lazy bogan or mentally ill user has to dig a few holes and fill them up again for that precious fortnightly cheque, so why not the State Government funded WAM? An annual CD showcasing WA’s musical talent is a great idea in theory, but every year the damn thing gets more bloated, less focused, prettier on the outside but more rotten at the core, like a depressed, botox-happy doctor’s wife or the Victorian police force.
This year, Kiss My WAMi is a whopping three CDs plus music video DVD. We’re talking 75 songs from almost as many bands. Now, I’m a proud enough Perth boy, but let’s face it: there aint 70 great acts in Perth today. Not even close. For Perth people, that should be no cause for shame: Perth is a small town that’s managed to export some stellar acts in recent years. But there’s a strong sense of overcompensation about this compilation, in the vein of the faded signpost at the roadside edge of your standard provincial backwater which claims that said backwater grows the best beetroot in the world. The beetroot may be good, but too much of it will make you shit purple.
In any case, having more bands on this album than talent is a fundamental error, kind of like inviting fifty people over for a party and only supplying a carton of beer. But Kiss My WAMi 08 suffers from more than just bloating. Conceptually, the thing is confusing. It’s flogged on the inside cover in typically meaningless political wank as a promotion of “Western Australia’s contemporary music scene”, but the choice of acts ranges from arbitrary to sycophantic to really mediocre. And God knows who the audience is for this mutant.
I mean, to take a random example, what the fuck is John Butler Trio doing on this compilation? Is Australia so covetous of minor talents that we can’t admit that John Butler is an American? And hasn’t the guy lived in Byron Bay, a lazy 4000km from Perth, for most of his career? Perth people have to face the fact that John Butler had a stopover in Perth on his way from Cali to Byron two decades ago during which he happened to busk a bit in Freo. He aint West Australian, but worse, he’s filthy rich. Butler made more money than Shannon Noll in 2004, so it’s not an exaggeration to say that he could buy the virginity of the first born daughter of every other act on this compilation, with enough petty cash left over for mung beans and tofu from an overpriced Byron eatery. Note to WAM and the WA government: John Butler doesn’t need the promotion [blog edit: please see sickening Rolling Stone cover above].
There’s three other points of Kiss My WAMi 08 where exposed bands are flaunted seemingly for the hell of it, but they aren’t as egregious as John Butler’s inclusion. The Panics excellent “Get Us Home” gets a gig on CD 1, as does the Waifs “Stay” and Little Birdy’s “After Dark”. Now, normally the Waifs make me want to hop into the bath with a plugged in toaster, but it must be admitted that when they ditch the Aussie blues and roots masturbation and write a proper pop song, as they do here, they aren’t half bad. As to Little Birdy, the less said about them the better.
There’s a lot of bad spread over these four discs, so much that it’s probably unfair to single out certain bands. Perhaps the best way to explain it is to say that every significant genre which is represented gets the apprentice butcher treatment many times over. Hair metal veterans Voyager, for example, don’t translate well to tape, because without the sense of humour inherent in their live shows, there’s just a very sincere, highly embarrassing wad of cum-soaked tissues jutting from the dustbin. Streetlight play low-rent emo for fat teenage groupies. The Justin Walshe Folk Machine sound like a Goon-drunk yobbo taking a wet shit on Johnny Cash’s grave in broad daylight. The Silents sound like the Vines without Asperger’s syndrome: that is, poseurs without even a hint of credibility. The list goes on.
There’s stuff to like here, but the problem is that you have to wade knee deep through diseased floodwater to reach the small islands of listenable music. In that regard, stalwarts Red Jezebel provide a workmanlike track, as do Zombie-obsessed freaks Snowman. Eleventh He Reaches London unjustly suffer by being lodged between metal cliché machine Pyromesh and the unlistenable Tengo Fuengo, but their 10 minute track is nevertheless a standout. Rollerskates and Delta Forse both do what Aussie hip hop does best by laying down chilled out Sunday barbecue tracks, notwithstanding that the boys from Delta Forse sound like genetic clones of Perth hip hop progenitors Downsyde. New Rules for Boats are refreshingly good.
Here’s the point: there’s maybe one CD worth of good, fresh, creative music on this four disc beast. For those acts that make the cut, it’s just bad luck that they’re forced to share space with some real hacks. By taking such a liberal, kitchen sink approach to its annual compilation, WAM is just hurting good Perth artists and alienating its possible audience beyond Perth music scenesters. And I can’t get behind that.
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