It doesn’t seem that long ago when The Kits were playing a cavernous venue in Brunswick to a crowd of seven adults and the proverbial scraggly garage rock dog. In those days, The Kits were another in a long, and generally fertile line of local garage bands. Not long after, The Kits packed their bags and headed to the old country to ply their wares; over five years later, and they’re still there.
The Kits of 2013 – well, actually, 2011, seeing as that’s the date the album was released originally – is both the same and different to that previous iteration. The opening track, Open Season, speaks from the same reverential rock’n’roll book from which The New Christs has preached for 30 years, Wild At Heart is adolescent surf rock with a clip across the back of the head from Alex Chilton and Salvation takes Bo Diddley and shoves him into a sweaty bar in early ’80s Sydney with Le Hoodoo Gurus. Subpop is psychedelia for the Invalid Stout generation and while Lead Us Into Temptation doesn’t corrupt its audience absolutely, it’s Only Ones intensity would confirm ’50s evangelists’ negative views of the danger to moral fibre by posed by rock’n’roll.
On Detroit Feeling, The Kits pay obvious tribute to the antecedents of contemporary garage rock, albeit in a subtle, unpretentious style; Modern Love is fast, snotty and arrogant in a Dead Boys sort of a way. Girl, You’ve Got No Remorse channels the post-Kuepper Saints (perhaps not coincidentally, Chris Bailey produced the album), Count On Me is as primitive as a teenager’s lumpy protestation of love, while Ain’t No Wolf pleads profanely until the lights dim, and the emotions have run dry.
It’d be good to see The Kits again. Someone should tempt them back into that cavernous Brunswick venue, just for old time’s sake.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Lead Us Into Temptation
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: THE STOOGES, SCREAMING TRIBESMEN, MC5
In A Word: Earnest
