At first glance you might be mistaken for thinking Peter Black – the regularly shirt-less, long-haired, rabble-rousing punk guitarist from Sydney’s neglected western suburbs – is going soft in his maturing years.
At first glance you might be mistaken for thinking Peter Black – the regularly shirt-less, long-haired, rabble-rousing punk guitarist from Sydney’s neglected western suburbs – is going soft in his maturing years. After years of teasing and tormenting the musical industry, and indulging the every perverted interest of the Hard Ons’ global legion of fans, Black’s solo album, Break Bread With The Monobrows, offers up a slab of music that’s as light and contemplative as The Hard Ons (and the off-shoot project, Nunchukka Superfly) is brash and abrasive.
It’s an impression that’s consistent with the opening track, Spanish Movies. Black croons like a teenager sitting in his bedroom, recounting the romantic wonders of finding love for the first time (which, given his Punchbowl origins, is more likely to have been in the back of a hotted-up Falcon at the drive-in than watching an arthouse film at the Valhalla). Can You Tell … is a variation on the theme, as Black contemplates the visual aesthetics of attraction (punctuated by such self-deprecating vignettes as “can you tell I’m being a bore?”), Sent is a touching reflection on the paradigm and paradoxes of parental responsibility and I’m Sorry Julie lays the narrator’s desire for emotional isolation clear for the world to see.
There are a few darker moments thrown into the mix as well: the love-struck protagonist of Depression Ditty seeks solace in darkness, as he yearns for a reconciliation with the object of his affection, Caring And Sharing takes a long hard in the room of mirrors and finds little to celebrate and Lament Of A Lonely Blues Singer is a bundle of emotional pain served up with a hint of a juvenile festive spirit.
The superficiality lyrical softness of Break Bread With The Monobrows is misleading. Peter Black has, and always will be, a child at heart – and that’s a good thing. As his contemporaries gradually slide into middle-aged comfort – or worse still, introspective, nostalgic self-indulgence – Black is still applying the spark of youth that inspired him originally to whatever dramas fill his life. And the music is as good as the drama is vivid.
