Once a derogatory description of a child born out wedlock, bastard has long evolved into a commonplace reference to an acquaintance whose perceived bastardry is more than likely to be the consequence of a razor-sharp comic wit, or a demonstrated ability to consume vast amounts of alcohol.
All of which probably means next to nothing for Melbourne’s La Bastard. La Bastard play the type of music you want to hear when your love life’s hurtling down the long sewage pipe to emotional oblivion, when your job is as rewarding as a festering shit sandwich and society is treating you with patronising contempt. That is, it’s suitably dark and emotive (Under My Eyes), confronting in a booze-addled Beasts Of Bourbon-fashion (Consumption Cowboy) and spiritually uplifting (So You Wrote Me a Letter) in a Passengers/Angie Pepper sort of way.
And having solicited the listener into a state of lugubrious pleasure, La Bastard jumps in the driver’s seat, puts the foot on the floor and takes you to a world where the licks are sharp, the whisky single malt only and the air thick with psychosexual tension. This Town Is Dead is a surfabilly journey into a land of hip shakin’ grooves, Ah… is as down and dirty as a drunk stumbling through his rites of alcoholic passage and Get Up, Get Out is sharp enough to draw blood and leave no sign of a wound.
Sierra Dance lives and breathes on a bass riff tough enough to fight ten men and live the tale; Black Threads is as sad and mournful as Spencer P Jones on a handful of downers. It’s Not Like I’m Telling A Lie sparks into life with the attitude of a bunch of stray cats looking for nocturnal violence; I Wanna Tell You Something corners you down a dark alley and demands answers. Treat this band with respect.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track:This Town Is Dead
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: BEASTS OF BOURBON, GENE VINCENT, PASSENGERS
In A Word: Tough
