After a run of solo shows in various places up and around Thornbury Town, Salmon’s been showcasing his current incarnation as Precious Jules, a two-piece with his recently-regular collaborator Mike Stranges on drums. Their debut record was launched at the Old Bar, a perfect fit for his steadfast legion of fans: the older punks who married and made good, guitar stars who made their names back in the halcyon days of the Punters Club and late-nineties junk-fiends who rejoined the land of the living. People who don’t get tanked and then knock over your drink, in other words. It’s a rare treat to enjoy that sort of decorum on a Saturday in Fitzroy.
Where do we place his current work? A violent reaction to the effete, bland dance-punk that enjoyed about 18 months of popularity in the middle of the last decade before promptly disappearing up its own arse? The freakish Frankensteinian love-child of Alan Vega and Rick James, conceived after a line of coke on the backseat of a V8 Supercar? Who cares? Kim’s as sprightly as ever, jutting up and down to the mic like a rooster marking his territory, thriving off the nods of approval from his adoptive city. Salmon has once again managed to give the impression that the times suit him, rather than the other way around. Our gain is your loss, Perth.
