Trying to predict longevity in the music industry is a futile pursuit; classic acts seemingly destined for lengthy stints drop quickly by the wayside, leaving workmanlike bands to chug along in prolonged mediocrity.
Art-pop, post-grunge acolytes Regurgitator are approaching their 25th year and hardly fit either category; taking each oddball record and bizarro tour as if it’s their last.
“If we knew we were going to last this long, we probably wouldn’t call ourselves Regurgitator,” bassist Ben Ely says.
The band’s rise has continued to shock Ely, particularly their triple platinum 1997 breakout Unit, though it’s not hard to see why the band’s satirical rock-pop caught on.
“When we started playing music, we were playing with really heavy intense bands and heavy lyrics,” Ely says. “He [Frontman Quan Yeomans] transposed those heavy lyrics to an early ‘90s pop guitar format. We realised the juxtaposition was quite funny; having intense sexual content and swear words in a song that sounded really happy and poppy.”
Speaking ahead of their upcoming Life Supporttour and their ninth studio album Headroxx, Ely thinks the balance with dedicated family lives has given the band a near permanent lease on life. Family life hasn’t toned down the band’s relentless idiosyncrasy however; if anything, Ely and fellow iconoclast frontman Yeomans are consumed by a new kind of madness.
“When we got together last year and played each other our demos, we realised there was a kind of theme of feeling anxious in the modern world [with] dealing with the pressures of family, kids, bills, trying to survive, environmental and political issues too. That’s why we called it Headroxx –it’s rock music about the brain, feelings and all that crazy stuff,” Ely explains.
The double A side singles ‘Don’t Stress’ and ‘Light Me on Fire’ are duelling Ely and Yeomans compositions which illustrate the pair’s respective methods of dealing with stress.
“’Don’t Stress’ is the idea to not stress in a world where everybody is stressed out of their fuckin’ brain,” Ely explains. Conversely, ‘Light Me on Fire’s’ stream of consciousness mines the fuzzed out pop of former hit ‘I Wanna Be A Nudist’ with psycho digi-poetry.
‘Weird Kind of Hard’ however is by far the strangest composition on the record, attributed to drummer Peter Kostic, in the first song he has ever penned for the band. Kostic’s demented falsetto is put to work in a track that Ween would have nightmares about.
“Weird Kind of Hard’ came about because we were singing in the car on the way to a gig and for some reason we just started singing this song and we got Pete to make up the words, so it became Pete’s song. It came out in literally five minutes but because of that it’s my favourite track, it sounds like it just doesn’t give a fuck and I love it.”
2019 will mark a very busy period for the band with their official 25th anniversary tentatively promising the release of the children’s album, as well as plenty of special shows and releases. Whether Regurgitator will still provide material for radio shock jocks to denounce past that, Ely can only speculate.
“Maybe we’ll start getting really vile,” he says. “When we’re 60, writing these horribly blowfly pornographic raps. Who gives a fuck, let’s go crazy, as Prince would say.”
