Order of Operation
The popular narrative for Ausmuteants goes something like this: Geelong; synth-punk; The Screamers, Chrome, Devo. With that firmly in mind, EVERETT TRUE reviews their second album.
Before I listened to Order Of Operation, the second album from Geelong’s synth-punk band Ausmuteants, I thought I’d better listen to some music from LA’s proto ?techno-punk? band The Screamers. This is what I chose.
I dunno, man. The Screamers might have been enormously influential – at least in certain garages in Geelong, if several different but surprisingly similar reviews of Ausmuteants? first album are to be believed – and way ahead of their time and all (they refused to release an album because they thought video was the future) but they sound disgustingly tinny to me, one-dimensional. Like James Chance, shorn of the sex – which was everything that mattered about James Chance, now I think about it.
I can hear why I never bothered with them at the time.
When I was living in Chelmsford (an insignificant satellite town of London) in the late ?70s, me and my callous comic-book-loving pals listened over and over again to Devo’s ?Jocko Homo?, trying to figure out the words. This was in the days before Smash Hits, with all their lyrics and fold-out Debbie Harry posters. I can still recite it word-perfect: ?Altogether now – and God made Man/But he used a monkey to do it/Apes in the plan/We’re all here to prove it/I can walk like an ape/Talk like an ape/Do what a monkey can do/God made Man/And monkeys to provide the clue.?
I bow to no man or woman in my love for Devo’s Brian Eno-produced 1978 album Are We Not Men? We are Devo!. It was chunky and funny and energetic. It kicked my bottom just where it needed it most. It burst, in fits and starts – and man, it even subverted the mainstream. In America for years afterwards, the term of abuse shouted at geeks and nerds from passing cars was ?DEVO.? Never liked ?em much after that, though – their formula became too codified.
?It makes me want to review Devo.?
I type ?I bow to no man or women in my love for?? yada yada yada, but of course I have to when it comes to snotty-voiced, loose-bowelled Geelong synth-punks Ausmuteants and their love for Devo’s first album. Not only did they make one (two) albums based entirely around it, but now they’ve made two (three). Now, that’s devotion.
In between they’ve substituted some vaguely less offensive lyrics for the vaguely more offensive lyrics – perhaps unconsciously mimicking the way Devo dropped songs like ?Mongoloid? early on – but man. It’s still Devo. Here, have a listen.
Still here? Good, good.
Now, that felt real good didn’t it? Man. Sparky, abrasive, irritating, spunky, sparky. Few other ?sp? words, too. (Sputum, sperm, scrotum.)
To be honest, it makes me want to review Devo’s debut, not Ausmuteants? sophomore. But, this is 2014 and we need to move on. There’s the new Game of Thrones to watch, Abbott to kick. So here goes:
?Freedom of Information? is a helluva starter. It bounces and spits venom: insistent and nasty.
?We’re Cops? is a helluva second song. It spits and bounces fury: aggravating and unrelenting it builds and builds until you beg for release. And then it releases but ONLY when you’re on your knees and looking for your contact lenses.
?Family Time? mentions the word ?paradise.? It’s a helluva third song.
?Stadiums? is like Mark E. Smith gone stadium rock (i.e. back when he had Brix in the band) and could easily end up as my favourite song from the final week of October 2014. At least, it might have done if I hadn’t seen The UV Race last week. You want to know what it sounds like, right? Well, different to the first three songs – ish – (it’s slower) and like something snotty and disreputable from 1978 – but you already guessed that, right?
?Publicity Stunts? I had to fast-forward through, for fear they were going to make the obvious Spoonerism.
?Gotta respect a band who can be wittier about their music than any critic.?
?Wrong? is Devo good. (Or is it The Screamers? I get so confused.) Straight up. The fact it also sounds like it could have been recorded by any of half-a-dozen great Brisbane bands from 2014 (minus the driving synth refrain) is only a plus in my shitty thumbed-over-too-much book of shitty half-arsed plaudits.
?Felix Tried to Kill Himself? is straight-up repetitive head-down mindless boogie – um, punk rock – and makes me feel uncomfortable. While I try to recompose myself, here’s the band themselves – Jake Robertson, Billy Gardner, Shaun Connor and Marc Dean – talking about their previous album:
Jake: My friend from Canberra (shoutout to Brendan Casey) thought this song yelled ?cunnilingus? in the chorus.
Billy: I made this up while Jake was taking a shit in my toilet ages ago. It’s way better than the song we were working on prior to him taking a shit. Took me ages to notice that I’d pretty directly stolen the ?Paranoid Video? riff though.
Marc: Last time we played The Tote these girls up the front were singing along with Billy but he was singing ?cunnilingus.? That was funny.
Gotta respect a band who can be wittier about their own music than any critic.
?Tunnel Vision? is around 3.47 minutes too long but it’s still a helluva eighth song. OK, I lie – it’s around this point in the album – and yes, I have listened to it five times now; and yes, I do think ?1982? has a certain snarly panache when taken in isolation – that I find my interest floundering and I wonder whether my time might be more constructively spent listening to the third of the holy triumvirate of New Wave bands that Ausmuteants are without fail compared to by hard-working critics on either side of the Pacific. To wit: Chrome.
Well now – that’s just a hipster way of saying Suicide, isn’t it?
No, I don’t hear it myself.
Order of Operation clocks in at 13 songs, 30 minutes. At half that length, it could have been a blistering nose-wipe of a synth-punk album. One to place carefully between the racks marked D and S. As it is, it becomes infuriating, repetitive and exasperating. So why does typing those words not feel like an insult?
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