Back in 1985, Coca Cola launched its better-tasting New Coke formula, replete with marketing fanfare. The company was immediately confronted with a barrage of complaints from its customer base, and within weeks ‘classic’ Coke had been re-introduced to the market. Years later, marketing strategists would muse that the campaign was an elaborate PR ruse designed to affirm the original Coke brand.
Judging by Cum the Raw Prawn, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Cosmic Psychos will change their tried and tested formula – notwithstanding Ross Knight’s assertion in Bum for Grubs that there’s more to him “than beer and pubs”. Knight retains his iron grip on Australian vernacular, John ‘Mad Macka’ McKeering drenches his power chords and in a dirty wah-wah wash and Dean Mueller thrashes his drum kit like a country cricketer wreaking havoc on a Saturday afternoon.
The profane rhetoric of Better Not Bitter betrays the Psychos’ resilience to fashion – in their words “It’s fucking bullshit mate.” Fuckwit City cuts through the bullshit of diplomacy and says what we all think, but are rarely prepared to say. Come and Get Some dares retaliation from the band’s critics and walks away unscathed, Cotton Mouth is the Psychos via Mr Floppy, and the French language intro to Cum the Raw Prawn quickly gives way to a defiant middle finger to any pretentious fuckwits in the Psychos’ gaze. Toothbrush immerses the urban myth of the sphincter-cleaning toothbrush in speed rock, Pint Girl might be a veiled criminological study, Ack Ack is Kiss down on the farm with Ace driving the tractor, and Didn’t Wanna Love Me is a touching tale of romance lost, in the fuck-off style only the Psychos can do.
There’s a theory in marketing that brands need periodic re-invention to remain vibrant in an ever-evolving commercial market. Go tell that to the Cosmic Psychos, and they’ll tell you to go fuck yourself. And they’d be right.
BY PATRICK EMERY
