There was this guy at cricket club. By the standards of his contemporaries, he’d been a budding sporting champion: in his late teens he’d withstood a fiery barrage from the local West Indian team as a middle-order batsman, and taken a couple of handy wickets in the tourists’ second innings; on the footy field, he’d played a couple of seasons in the SANFL reserves team, earning occasional mentions in local dispatches.
But by his early 20s, his time in the sporting sun was all but over: propped up at the bar of our sub-district cricket club, he regaled us with stories of Hoggy, Big Bird and assorted sundry participants in his truncated career. We looked upon him with a mixture of affection and pity: to borrow from Tennyson, is it better to have starred and fallen, then never have starred at all?
Sydney band You Beauty’s debut album, Jersey Flegg, recounts a similar story. It’s a concept album built around a rugby league legend whose impressive career unravels in the wake of a failed relationship, declining physical skills and myopic life planning. While the modern-day tragedy of Jersey Flegg is all too familiar, the songs exhibiting a pop sensibility as dexterous as any youthful baulk, weave or fake.
The title track sets the scene: it’s rueful, a semi-critical assessment of the state of play, both emotionally and professional. The lazy, syncopated drum rhythms suggest the protagonist can get up and run; the catchy melody a memory of what was, and maybe could be again. By Mennal Mondays those memories are fading: it was great back in 1992, with all the trappings of suburban acclaim. Scent of My Youth is nostalgic, locating success in the context of its paternal antecedent; Ann Maree is the starry-eyed romantic pop song from central casting – why can’t it always be like this?
On Now Her Skirt things have started to go wrong: the darkness of the track reflects the bleakness of events – the wonder of romance has evaporated, replaced by an alcoholic dependence. By Crummy Thoughts everything has gone to shit: the narrator has lost control of his life, a collage of drunken benders and misplaced resentment. Drop Me Now packs the swagger of the superficially invincible – I’m a fucking legend mate, whatchya gonna do?
Healing Spirit suggests there might be light at the end of the tunnel: there’s a distant ‘80s sensibility and a yearning to recover a sense of self-belief and emotional connection. Rabbits finds familiarity transcended by the anonymity that comes with the passage of time; we’ve seen it all before, but hopefully it’ll end differently. It ends with Off the Bench – is this the on-field resolve of the protagonist’s transposed to his maturing self? We can only hope.
The would-be sporting legend of my youth could relate to the narrative arc of Jersey Flegg; sadly, given his misguided belief that pop music peaked with The Eagles’ Hotel California, he probably wouldn’t appreciate You Beauty’s crisp melodies, and therein lies a deeper message.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Song: Mennal Mondays
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: SMUDGE, THE LEMONHEADS
In A Word:Footy
