Music can be fun. Yes, believe it. Crazy spinning on your head and showing your knickers fun. Giggling in a ball pool with a Mini Milk fun. The kind of fun that gives you the hiccups. Yet here in the virtual Crud Towers, while you can understand that we enjoy music, most of the time – occasionally getting so very excited we give ourselves a headache and have to have a little sit down – mining pits of despair, toilsome lengths of self-discovery and enduring indulgence to excavate said enjoyment isn’t exactly what your layman would dub “FUN!”. Fun is throwaway. Fun is something you don’t have to think twice about. Fun encourages you to go find more fun, and that can’t ever be too complex a process, lest it stop being fun. Which is maybe why we tend to strip all but the most notable fun of its credibility, deeming it disposable and of little use to us in the long term. Girls Aloud are fun, aren’t they, but how many of you reading this own an album of theirs? No, me neither.
What we are getting around to saying is that considering all of that, we are so excited about this debut album from Melbourne, Australia’s soft-skinned testosterone-drizzled boy/girl 3-piece The Grates that we’re in danger of sustaining injury. In fact, this record really is more fun than we can remember being under the influence of, possibly since we saw the Polyphonic Spree live in the Barfly. And that was ridiculous fun anyway, this is the proper stuff, instantaneous in its highs. Yet it is also the most creative 40-minute fit of sound, instant but unrepetitive, intricately capable garage punk shot through with sugar crystals. Every track is really a newfound joy, innovating despite utilising the most rudimentary and recognisable punk and pop cornerstones.
Their numerous successes are two-pronged, using much the same template as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The ever-resourceful John Patterson and Alana Skyring on guitar and drums liberally fire interlocked foundation rhythms, chiming guitars, viral distorted melodies and tight overdrive with an admirable grasp of control. And then there’s Patience Hodgson. Ringleader, prom queen, pop vixen, punk kitten. Her stream of exuberance, heightened glee and emotional texture has a blistering range, takes cues from Kim Deal, Andrea Zollo and Siouxise Sioux, but is a clear product of its own innocence and zest. And at least twice per song she hits Corin Tucker from Sleater Kinney’s intoxicatingly piercing heights, which is worth dues in itself.
It’s a 60s girl group Motown post punk grunge pop cross-pollination skimming influence from the likes of Elastica, Blondie, Siouxise & the Banshees, Sleater Kinney, Ramones, Lush, The Breeders and more. It never once runs out of steam, there always seems to be a new way to twist your hip out of joint. ‘Little People’ has its base supplemented by retro Bontempi-style organ and recorder and all the sky-punching “HEY!”s you could desire. The adrenaline arrow in your heart, ‘Lies’, shuffles radiantly and scrappily like The White Stripes pillow fighting with Blondie and throwing an adorable strop. ‘Science Is Golden’ is gorgeous, like the Shangri Las puppeteering Courtney Love through all she dreams she would one day be, hand-claps included. And ‘I Am Siam’, closing the album, is their ‘Maps’, a beautifully wavering slow-mo Belly ballad headed up by a more durable Karen O. There is more than enough on here to betray the pull of gravity. Fun fun fun, all the way to the ionosphere.
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