In pre-Enlightenment days, people who claimed they could predict the future were revered for their apparent magical abilities, condemned as crackpots or put to death as witches. These days, add in a bit of trite economic analysis and corporate jargon and predicting the future of the market can make you an absolute mozza as a consultant, even if a flash suited consultant’s prediction is as credible as a white bearded soothsayer telling you the end is nigh.
Is Ausmuteants really the band of the future? Probably not, given that these surf coast reprobates have about as much affection for corporate sycophancy as George Christensen has for Yusuf Islam. But that’s straight society’s problem, not Ausmuteants’. Band of the Future is another Ausmuteants album that reminds you that rock’n’roll needs to be sharp and angry to bite, and to survive.
There’s 14 tracks on this record, clocking in at a breezy 21 minutes. It’s got that Devo-meets-Pistols punk thing going again, both in the razor sharp melodies and the lyrical swipes at the coastal population, music journalists, cultural dysfunction and sexual politics. Silent Genes makes Suicidal Tendencies sound like a 60/40 dance band, I Hate You is scathing knife cutting through the butter of disingenuous diplomacy. Coastal Living is the angry punk flipside of Sea Change; Music Writers is a salient reminder that not all opinions are necessary to be heard and read. Mr Right is furiously affectionate in a new wavey-Ramones sort of way; Stuck is The Buzzcocks off their heads on some backyard narcotic concoction that doesn’t bear thinking about.
If Ausmuteants was the band of the future, the world might be a better place. But if everyone loved Ausmuteants, they’d have nothing to fight against.
BY PATRICK EMERY
