Stray Currents
The slippery new EP from Melbourne chameleons Baptism of Uzi captures a brief moment in time that’s already gone, writes PATRICK EMERY.
Greil Marcus – ever the perceptive, if occasionally lugubrious, socio-musical commentator – located Oliver Stone’s biopic of The Doors in the context of a contrived notion of the Sixties. The Sixties has become an idea, Marcus argued, a mythology constructed by radical discourse and iconic images.
In comparison, the Seventies has been treated as something of an embarrassing familial relation in the construction of cultural and political eras past. The decade that gave us such underwhelming public figures as Jimmy Carter, Jim Callaghan and Malcolm Fraser also offered up Watergate, the Loans Affair and the Winter of Discontent.
?The EP was recorded when the band was toying with a detour from prog into funk, a journey it’s declined to continue.?
To be aligned with the Sixties is to be vibrant, excited and energetic; the Seventies are indulgent, unflattering, brown and disappointing. In the Sixties punk spirit bit at the heels of the dominant culture; in the Seventies, punk had to – metaphorically and literally – resort to violent insurrection to deal with the turgid, flaccid and painfully self-obsessed social and musical discourse.
To listen to Baptism of Uzi’s latest EP, Stray Currents*, is to be reminded that there was good in the Seventies. *Stray Currents has five songs, stretching out over 17 minutes. The aural picture of the band it presents is two years out of date – the EP was recorded at a moment in time when the band was toying with a detour from prog into funk, a journey it’s now declined to continue – and the record itself is rife with edits and overdubs of the type you’d expect to find in a classic Californian album.
The EP starts with the enigmatic ?Intro?. A splash of space noise that evolves gradually before emerging into a pop melody the finest pop songwriters spent years, and mountains of class A drugs, trying to find. Everything is good, we’re all happy, the sun is out and people are being good to one another. The moment builds to a crescendo and rides out into the Malibu sunset, with Donald Fagan gazing in wonder.
?To suggest [this] is a retro record is to damn both the record and Baptism of Uzi with faint and patronising praise.?
The track breaks seamlessly into ?Carnal Need?, and it’s Devo in 1974, pushing the rock envelope in a radical punk-egghead direction; or is it Wire in 1978, offering a Trotskyist counterpoint to Malcolm McLaren’s tabloid Leninist movement? There’s an interlude of classic prog – keyboards, indecipherable galactic noise, flailing drums, shards of guitar – before the order of rock is restored.
?Fire Penguin? starts somewhere in continental Europe in 1972, maybe in the recesses of Michael Rother’s mind, with Conny Plank loitering around looking for a piece of the action. Next thing you know, it’s Californian Krautrock, disciplined but melodic, intense but hedonistic. ?Believe? starts on a simple drum track, with a bass line that threatens to commit acts of unbridled passion on your vulnerable form. When the vocals roll in, you’re on the dance floor with The Tavares in 1977, its soft harmonies taking you to places you’ve always wanted to go; the prog lick jumps over the top and everything’s getting down and dirty.
The finale comes with ?Stray Current?, a track that’s already been stretched, contorted and manipulated into a hundred different shapes and sizes in Baptism of Uzi’s live show. This version picks off where ?Believe? leaves off, picking a ride with The Commodores in 1978, waving at Talking Heads in 1980 and spending a night with Marvin Gaye before everything went horribly wrong. The underlying melody transforms into its ideal viscous funk form; it’s comforting, and replete with subtle sexuality.
Of course, to suggest Stray Currents is a retro record is to damn both the record and Baptism of Uzi with faint and patronising praise. The more pertinent observation – even the truth, perhaps – is that Baptism of Uzi remains one of the most evocative bands around. What they can’t do with a riff, an idea or a musical concept isn’t worth bothering about: you can look, but you can’t touch it.
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##?Stray Currents? is out now though Cobra Snake Necktie and Love & Theft. Baptism of Uzi launch the EP this Saturday (July 6) at Northcote Social Club with Turtlenecjk and Atolls.
CSNT09 Baptism of Uzi – Stray Currents 10" EP by Baptism of Uzi