The closest thing to class warfare in benign Adelaide was hanging shit on private school kids from the eastern suburbs.
It’s those memories that come flooding back when Adelaide band Tea narrates the story of the eastern suburbs in Burnside Mums: slacker, slightly obnoxious, naive and comically sincere. On Crook, Tea channels You Am I if Tim Rogers had been a surfie from Glenelg: the lyrics tell the tale of some feeling like shit, the music draws the link between Eel Pie and Greasy Pop, and the drum fills are to die for. Birthday Boy is a two-minute wonder that takes the best garage elements from Kiss’s Deuce and creates the best birthday celebration you’d ever want; Tea Home for Xmas takes a whimsical, humorous and slightly violent 10-minute journey across the Princes Highway and back again, played out against a lo-fi psychedelic soundtrack that’s equal parts Flipper, MC5’s Black to Comm and Painkillers.
OD is the sad and seedy side of the City of Churches: sometimes shit is a lot worse than it seems, but at least you’ve got a tight slacker punk track like this to make you forget about the bad stuff. Matt Vecchio is The Stems’ Move Me taken into a dark place in the northern suburbs and given a serious working over, while Ballad of Parash is suburban country with a sense of contrition and sincerity that makes you want to offer a reassuring hug.
45 seconds of feedback and noise precedes the final track, Some People. It’s simultaneously tender and confrontational, like an earnest young kid trying to woo the object of his affection with a copy of the Velvet Underground’s first album and a copy of John Cale’s What’s Welsh for Zen. You’re never quite sure how it’s going to end, but you’re enjoying the ride.
And when it does eventually finish – in a blaze of noise not untypical of the end of a night down Christies Beach way – you’re simultaneously violated and exhilarated. Not bad for a night out in Adelaide.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Tea Home for Xmas
If You Like These, You’ll, Like This: THE WHO, PAINKILLERS, SCREAMING BELEIVERS AND THE DAGOES
In A Word: Slacker
