This is a fucking great album, and that’s not just because Drunk Mums arrived at a punk rock band name that’d make Jello Biafra quiver with demented excitement, or that the title of the album is suggestive of a group of kids that have lost the plot and stumbled off into the proverbial jungle, unable to cope with the strictures of modern society.
It’s a good fucking record because of the 14 razor sharp garage punk tracks that swagger, sneer and metaphorically piss all over pallid contemporary offerings. It’s because Stinnys’ Brain has the best laconic garage riff since Eddy Current Suppression Ring fused The Kinks with Devo; listen to the track devolve into harmony-laden scuzzville and it’s even better. It’s because Pub On My Own has the cocky swagger and deceptive simplicity of Brian Jonestown Massacre, A-Gain is a freakish journey through rock’n’roll time and space and emotional confusion, and Girls on Their Sides sways reverentially on the grave of Link Wray’s Rumble.
But it’s even more than that. On a subject matter level, it’s because tracks like the amphetamine-laced Nanganator, the proto-sludge and scream of Pretty Shitty, the pop’n’garage Piss the Bed, and the dirty pub rock of Vitamin D chuck polite social discourse out the window and shine a boozing, boorish rock’n’roll light on the inanity and personal frustrations of modern existence. And it’s because Dirty Birmy reminds us of the colourful, if fading memories of the troubled Birmingham Hotel (and the now departed Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda), Plastic has the laddish sensibility of Dave Edmunds on a lager frenzy, and Not Here to Talk is an angry, cathartic, middle-fingered salute to diplomacy.
Whichever way you want to look at it, this is a shit hot album, and you might not hear a better garage punk record all year.
BY PATRICK EMERY
