Adding Up The Statsmen Data

One of the most exciting bands going in Brisbane when I was "growing up" in my 20s was the stupid noise fury of Eat Laser Scumbag! Fast, furious, shouty, colour-coded - they were the ketamine Wiggles for the Ramones kids with ASD and middle ear infections. They tore everything apart, a cyclone of hypercolour decimation. The members of these bands went on to other endeavours (the slacker pop nous brilliance of Nova Scotia, the cartoon punk splurge of Undead Apes, the guttural pub punk of Eyes Ninety etceteraaaaaaaa).

But sometimes you gotta keep the dream alive.

Admittedly Champion Data, the throwaway album from 3/4 of ELS!, called here Statsmen, is decidedly different, more interested in Guided By Voices, Pedro The Lion and infinite other 90s guitar bands, taking the combustible energy of cassette-chewed lo-fi rock to all corners of the canvas (with some 8-bit Numan-highfiving-Devo magic on 'Candy', retrofuturist synth silliness on 'Indestructible Roger' and excellently warped motorik psycher 'Taken Over' thrown in to keep you on your toes). This may have been something to do to fill in time - but seriously, this is a great release that everyone should get into. I for one cannot get enough.

Figures Taekare Of Themselves

Figures is a band from Brisbane that like their 90s guitar rock to be sparse yet dark, ruminative but destructive, maudlin yet cleansing. There are checkpoints across their three tracks on their Taekare EP (recorded at Incremental Records) that evokes Dinosaur Jr, Pedro The Lion (especially in the quieter moments of 'Figure Eight'), Sonic Youth...and another band enamoured with the blanket-bomb noise of shoegaze, Melbourne legends White Walls. I seem hardwired to dig bands that take the shoegaze noise aesthetic and give it a brittle edge, stripping away the dreaminess, even the dreariness, to lend it fire. Swervedriver had moments like this, to be far, but it seems like it's the younger bands that have found that serrating the fuzz and distortion gives new shadows to lurk in and burst out of. It's early days to be sure, but Figures look the goods.