It takes a lot of chutzpah to take a swing at the kings, but Chris Cheney, Phil Jamieson, Tim Rogers and Josh Pyke have never been lacking there. After two runs of The White Album Concert, the four are reviving the hit show for the iconic record’s 50th anniversary.
Have there been any change-ups since the 2009 and 2014 tours? Not the song allocation. We are doing essentially the same songs that have been divided up on past tours. We are going to add a few extra songs and a few little surprises. It was Tim’s idea to do something special and different towards the end. – Chris Cheney (The Living End)
What’s your advice for tackling one of the most iconic albums of all time live? I think we all realised the first time we did this show that we needed to put our own spin on the songs. It’s such a revered and loved record it’d be silly to try to copy it. But you also want to show respect, so it’s a fine line. – Josh Pyke
What’s your favourite hidden gem on the album? Julia. Not exactly hidden, but the hurt and bewilderment of that boy’s relationship with his mum is laid bare, then completed two years later with Mother. Hang on, must call Mum. – Tim Rogers (You Am I)
In your opinion where does ‘The White Album’ sit against classics Abbey Road and Sgt Peppers? ‘The White Album’ is a double album filled with quirk and flaws and terror and melody and avant-garde and country and rock’n’roll and craziness. It kind of has everything. It’s broader in scope that the other albums, making it a great live experience. – Philip Jamieson (Grinspoon)
Twenty five years ago the Tonkin family bought a pub with the aim of making it a home for live music. It worked. NATHAN DAVIES looks at a quarter of a century of tunes at the Governor Hindmarsh.
Pub life runs deep in veins of the Tonkin family. Melissa and Jo Tonkin’s great-grandmother sold liquor from her general story in Victoria’s Tolmie Ranges, and the sisters were raised in the pubs owned by parents Brian and Vivien.
“Our mother was even christened in a pub,” Melissa says over a cup of tea on the veranda of South Australia’s best-known live music venue, The Governor Hindmarsh Hotel
It was probably inevitable, then, that the sisters would go into the pub game themselves but when they took over a down-at-heel drinking hole in Adelaide’s inner-west they could have never envisioned what it would become.
“When the family first bought the pub in 1993 it was very eighties colours — lots of aqua — and people used to call it the Lollipop Hotel,” Melissa says.
“This pub was on the wrong side of the tracks, literally. Our parents bought this pub with the idea of giving something back to the music community.”
Brian and Vivien were lured to Adelaide in 1980 thanks to a Don Dunstan-inspired feeling of optimism that had enveloped the city.
“We were tossing up whether to go to Melbourne or Adelaide, and at that time it felt like a lot of good things were happening in Adelaide” Melissa says.
“So we came over and our parents bought the Bridgewater Inn. We became very friendly with Redgum and lots of other bands in that Hills scene.”
Music was always front and centre for the Tonkin family, as integral to their pub vision as cold beer. However none of the family pubs — the Bridgewater, the Maylands and Port Elliot’s Royal Family — had a dedicated music room. Enter The Gov.
Right from the start the Tonkins set about remaking The Gov — which at one point even had a boxing ring out the back — into a hub for musos, inviting groups like Jazz SA, the SA Blues Club and folk collectives to make the hotel their own. When Melissa and Jo were lured back from Sydney to run the pub in 1997, with help from brother Richard, they started booking more traditional rock acts.
“Jo started booking all the bands, rock bands — Renee Geyer, The Cruel Sea, Paul Kelly — and there was a bit of a change of energy,” Melissa says.
It worked because Melissa and Jo were giving the rock-loving punters of Adelaide something they craved — a large, dedicated band room. Just years earlier, with the introduction of poker machines in the early nineties, many of the suburban band rooms that nurtured Adelaide’s famous pub rock scene had been carved up and renovated into mini-casinos.
The sisters set about enlarging the band room to hold 750 people, and The Gov soon became the unofficial home of live music in Adelaide, scooping numerous awards and being inducted into the Adelaide Music Collective’s Hall of Fame.
The list of acts that The Gov has managed to attract over the years is impressive to say the least. The Angels, The Church, Courtney Barnett, Dan Sultan, Diesel, The Drones, Hoodoo Gurus, The Gobetweens, Pseudo Echo, Radio Birdman, The Sunnyboys and Sia are just some of the hundreds of Aussie acts who’ve taken to the stage. On the international front, The Gov has hosted everyone from Canned Heat to Cat Power, Taj Mahal to The Troggs and many more.
They even famously staged a show by US hip-hop artist ASAP Ferg during Adelaide’s infamous blackout. trucking in a generator and lighting the room with candles.
So, out of the hundreds of acts is there an elusive artist the sisters haven’t yet managed to lock down?
“Um, Elvis?” Melissa laughs. “Failing that, I think it’d be amazing to get Bob Dylan, or Ry Cooder.”
Let’s hope.
THE ARTISTS SPEAK
SARAH MCLEOD. THE SUPERJESUS
I’ve played The Gov many times, both with The SuperJesus and solo shows supporting UK singers John Waite and James Walsh. It’s my home town so I will always have a special fondness for it. There’s a feeling in the band room that tonight’s gonna be a good night. and it always is. I’ve never had a bad gig there.
TIM ROGERS. YOU AM I
The Gov has always let us through the front door, which is always a good, if surprising, start.
A few ales in the front bar with its aesthetically pleasing environs, a sound check that’s never harried or hurried, staff with cheeky smiles and the promise of a slice o’ pizza. We ain’t in Kansas no more.
Backstage is a good hang, fridge full, and being close to the crowd there’s an expectant atmosphere, always.
Security eyeing us with deserved yet humorous suspicion. And we’re on.
Love that stage – convex and loud. We promise to keep the band room cleanish and keep the patrons thirsty and smilin’.
Thank you Gov. we look forward to next time, if you let us in again.
JOSH PYKE
The Gov is one of my favourite places to play in Australia, and it was where I played my second-ever headline show in Adelaide.
I’ve had the opportunity to play plenty of other places, but I always come back to The Gov. It’s such a great live venue with such a great crowd. The Gov crowd just knows how to appreciate live music.
VINCE CONTARINO. ZEP BOYS
The Gov was a shot in the arm for Adelaide’s live scene after the heydays of the seventies and eighties.
A lot of the venues from that time were swallowed up by the pokies, so The Gov was much needed. We only play two venues in Adelaide – the Festival Theatre and The Gov.
It’s one of the most successful Beatles events ever staged in Australia. Following two sold-out tours, in 2009 and 2014, Chris Cheney (The Living End), Phil Jamieson (Grinspoon), Tim Rogers (You Am I) and ARIA Award-winning solo artist Josh Pyke are reuniting for a special 2018 tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ White Album (Beatles’ self-titled ninth studio album). They’ll perform the White Album from start to finish – with a few surprises along the way – while being backed by a 17-piece rock orchestra, led by musical director Rex Goh, with guitars, strings, horns and two drummers. And don’t stress, they’re not pretending to be The Beatles – this is a celebration, not a tribute band. Catch it at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on July 13 & 14. Tix via www.whitealbumconcert.com/
The stage adaptation of Green Day’s American Idiot album is coming to Brisbane, and the two real life rockers playing antihero St Jimmy — Chris Cheney and Phil Jamieson — talk to Steve Bell about transitioning from one type of stage to another. Cover and feature pics by Terry Soo.
For many years East Bay punks Green Day relished their typecasting as snotty-brat teens, espousing the virtues of anti-values like apathy, self-loathing and narcissism with a scathing humour that suited their high-octane pop-punk perfectly.
As time passed, however, and they became a massive deal on the world stage, both their music and their world view matured to the point where their 2004 seventh album American Idiot — a sprawling conceptual piece penned by frontman Billie Joe Armstrong — was lauded upon its release for its articulate appraisal of the various malaises afflicting post-9/11 suburbia. It peered presciently at how the typical troubles associated with youngsters coming of age were being exacerbated by both insipid government and the corporations controlling mass media — magnified by a general all-pervading sense of disillusionment and lethargy — with these forces combining to potentially push a whole generation off the rails.
It was an ambitious move by Green Day (and Armstrong) but one that paid handsome dividends, reviving the band’s career and leading to a stage musical adaptation of American Idiot that opened on Broadway in 2010, winning two Tony Awards. It took all of the songs from the American Idiot album— as well as a few from 2009 follow-up 21st Century Breakdown — and moulded them into a compelling narrative, one as pertinent now as it was back when the songs were penned.
Now Brisbane theatre company, shake & stir, are bringing an exclusive Australian production of the “punk rock opera” to QPAC, and for the pivotal role of St Jimmy (at times performed by Armstrong himself on Broadway) they’ve tapped two genuine Australian rock stars — Chris Cheney (The Living End) and Phil Jamieson (Grinspoon) — to play the character in separate stints, but both of whom are currently preparing together to inhabit this somewhat nefarious character.
“Whether St Jimmy is a saint or not depends on your definition of saint,” Jamieson reflects, “but I don’t think so — he’s a villain. He’s the musical villain.”
“That’s what drew me to the idea of actually being able to pull the role off, I think, I don’t have to go outthere and play Mr Nice Guy,” Cheney smiles. “I can just dig the heels in a bit, and get a bit gritty with the character. He’s the one who sort of leads the lead character Johnny down the path of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.
“[Johnny] starts out as this squeaky clean kinda teenager, and then you see his descent into debauchery. So there’s some pretty harrowing scenes: for all of Green Day’s crazy, kinda wacky punk image, there’s some really dark lyrics in there.
“It covers universal themes but also correlates back with what’s going on in America right now, with the madman at the controls, it’s like history almost repeating itself. But there is that timeless theme in the musical, with these kids trying to get out — trying to escape and find a better way — and tripping up wildly.”
Both Cheney and Jamieson were well acquainted with Green Day when American Idiot first came out — especially Cheney, given that The Living End supported them on the Australian Insomniac tour in 1996 — but both remember being taken aback by the album’s strength.
“I loved the record when it was released, I thought it was really, really impressive back in the day,” Jamieson gushes. “I went and saw the tour — I think from memory old mate here [points at Cheney] might have got up and ruined a song with them when I saw them, a Clash song. In the wrong key. But I was really impressed by it.”
“They were in the wrong key, I wasn’t,” Cheney laughs. “So I thought it was their best work,” Jamieson continues mischievously.“I mean I loved [GreenDay’s 1994 breakthrough third album] Dookie — so did the world — and then Green Day did what they did and I sort of wandered off. I guess you can become a bit complacent about acts after a while, you go, ‘I know your tricks, I know those bits, ‘ but then they brought [American Idiot] out and I was, like, ‘Wow, okay, I don’t know all your tricks. It’s a really, really impressive record.”
“Billie Joe’s always been a huge fan of The Who and rock operas and all that — he’s got a Jesus Christ Superstar tattoo on him — so it’s kind of cool that a writer like that could embrace it and put it into the form that he did,” Cheney reflects. “It’s a cracker of a record. It’s not easy to write songs that are linked — it’s like the second side of Abbey Road [by The Beatles] or something, the way that all of the songs were linked together.I love that sort of thing, it’s like the nutty professor or something, but it’s not easy to do.”
Both leads are really looking forward to their first major theatrical experience, even if they’re a tad overwhelmed by the quality of the Australian cast around them.
“I’m not an actor — obviously — and what I found when I came here is that the cast are all ‘triple threats’, for want of a better term — they can sing really well, they can dance really well and they can act really well,” Jamieson tells. “So it became a bit of thing where I was fairly terrified going to rehearsa l— I think I might have psyched myself out a bit. But it’s very daunting. And the piece is also quite challenging. It’s great, though, it’s really fun and it’s really quite a moving piece — it’s definitely not 42nd Street, it’s more like Les Mis. It’s sad, there’s some really, really moving parts.”
“I haven’t performed in theatre since Year 12 drama but I tell you what, though; I reckon I’m always acting when I’m on stage anyway!” Cheney laughs. “I’ll see some footage back and go, ‘Who the fuck is that guy?’ So while I do think that this acting caper is a stretch for the two of us, obviously, maybe it’s not that much of a stretch. I feel like when you get on stage I become this other thing anyway, and we’re playing the kinda rock’n’roll guy in this show so it’s not really a huge leap.”
And both of these acting newbs are at pains to point out that you don’t need to be a veteran theatre lover to dig American Idiot. “It’s not just for the theatre goers, it’s for the rock’n’roll fans,” Cheney stresses.
“It’s definitely worthy and will be a lot of fun,” Jamieson agrees. “It will be loud and they will be serving alcohol, but it will be in a theatre. And there’s some really funny theatre moments in the performance which are a bit kitsch — which I love — then there’s some full-on rocking out and some dark, incredibly moving moments as well. I can’t wait.”
Getting Idiotic Both of the rockers playing St Jimmy believe that there’s alot more discipline required for acting than when they’re on stage playing music with their bandmates.
“In my first run-through I put my wrong hand on something, so that destroyed the whole piece,”Jamieson recalls. “So I’m trying to get my head around staging, and being really disciplined about where I put my feet.”
“Yeah, in a rock band — especially my band anyway — I can kinda go off on a tangent, and the other guys will just follow,” Cheney continues. “Here, those other 20 kids in there are not going to follow if we decide to mix it up halfway through a tune! Nor would the band!”
Jamieson — who takes over as St Jimmy after Cheney’s run concludes — has been in the fortunate position of seeing a full run-through, and was floored by the calibre of the cast.
“It’s pretty impressive — they don’t hit any bum notes, not that I’ve heard,” he marvels.“They leave that to us. They never hit a bum note, which is annoying, and they know all their choreography and they’re always right… It gives me the shits. But they’re actually incredible, just seeing how well the cast act it out and how well they sing it, and how much emotion they put into it — that’s worth the ticket price alone, regardless of us douchebags.”
Andy Sang, Andy Watched Better known as the drummer for The Living End, Andy Strachan has just released his self-titled EP, something the talented musician says was a labour of love, with a little help from his friends.
While The Living End are putting the finishing touches on the group’s seventh studio album, drummer Andy Strachan says he decided to continue on with another personal project, this time operating under his own name. “The EP took forever because I did it in spits and spurts and finished recording the whole thing over a year ago and bashed it altogether. There is no pre-production, just a lot of tweaking and it came together and then I have to save some coin to release it, it takes a long time but is a real challenge and has been fun.”
The debut single from the self-titled album, Follow The Sun, certainly catches your attention with a mix of heavy riffs, solid lyrics and eerie melodies, something Strachan says got the thumbs up from his producer and good friend Woody Annison. “That riff came along and I thought that is good and put it aside and Woody and I worked on the riff and it just sounded so heavy. “My mind went into this negative thought process and thought about suicide and people jumping off bridges. “I thought I did not want to be singing about that and put it on the back burner and a few months later I put a positive spin on it about getting out of bed every morning and getting on with it. “When you are writing songs there are not fifty thousand options – there is just what sounds good to my ear and that cuts down the decision process a lot.”
Strachan is currently locking himself away in his ‘man room’ working out how he will play the tracks live. He notes that while The Living End is his main priority, his latest EP is about keeping the creative juices flowing in between recording and live performances. “This is about keeping me occupied and I have a batch of 20-odd songs ready to go when I get the chance. I am a shit guitarist and occasionally I will wrap strings in dunny paper because I only want two strings working at a time. I have two guitars and there are a couple of super fast songs I have written and eventually want to record.”
THE Happy Accidents are back at The Piping Hot Chicken and Burger Grill for a special show on August 30.
Andy Strachan (Living End), Simon Dawe and Tim Neal (and guests) will be cooking up their own unique brand of solid, high energy Funk with smatterings of Reggae all smothered in Soul.
Joining them on the night are guests ‘Last Coast’.
Last Coast hail from Barwon Heads and over the course of 2014 have been developing their brand of rock atmospherica.
Tickets are $15, available from The Piping Hot Chicken and Burger Grill, get them early as it sold out last time. Tel: 52551566.
Officially entitled ‘The Beatles’ but universally known as The White Album, the double LP was recorded in a fragmented atmosphere (with many songs lacking the participation of all four Beatles). In 2009, 41 years after its release, four of Australia’s finest – You Am I’s Tim Rogers, Josh Pyke, Chris Cheney of The Living End and Grinspoon frontman Phil Jamieson – brought it back to life. Now they were back again to play the whole lot in track order.
The 17 piece backing setup was impressive, with brass, strings and two drum kits. The gear was picked to match the album cover too, with white baby grand and black and white drums. The show kicked off with a jet plane sample as Cheney let loose with ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’, before Jamieson followed up with the gentler ‘Dear Prudence’. Jamieson, Cheney and Pyke joined forces for ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ before Rogers made his first appearance in a truly shocking checked suit for ‘Wild Honey Pie’. He had no guitar to do windmills with, but did the next best thing with his tambourine. It was a bizarre feeling at first, seeing these legends in a kind of super karaoke. However, that feeling passed quickly as the four guys and their backing band were so into the songs and the fun of the event. With 30 songs in two sets to get through, there was no mucking about and a continual swapping over between singers, with occasional participation by all four at once.
Each of the stars brought his own style to the show. Jamieson, in dinner jacket and bow tie, camped it up in the first half, but came back full of attitude and high kicks after the interval. Pyke was the cool crooner, while Cheney was the guitar wielding straight rocker. Rogers played the rascal, becoming increasingly more disheveled as the night wore on, although he returned in the second half looking cool in tropical white. He was also the comedy relief and spokesman for the main players, with his most telling comment being that they were not there for nostalgia, they were there for the joy of the songs and delivering them with a lot of love.
Jamieson was the most mobile, wandering through the backing band, draping himself on them and, to the misgivings of the audience, overselected members of the crowd. He was super flexible, banging out the big notes in ‘Yer Blues’ and mincing about for ‘Honey Pie’ (it was a long way from Grinspoon’s ‘Dead Cat’). Cheney showed his stuff with the wailing, drawn out guitar solo in ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and rocked out in ‘Helter Skelter’, playing a guitar laid flat on the floor before throwing it high for a catch. Rogers shone out with his extravagant, theatrical style, with a fake pistol (complete with ‘bang’ flag) against his head for ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’, then dancing around a plastic pig mask during ‘Piggies’. Pyke’s biggest moments were in ‘Julia’ and ‘Blackbird’; songs just made for his smooth vocals.
The backing band, led by musical director Rex Goh, flexed its muscles presenting the experimental instrumental ‘Revolution 9’, with its clouded vocal effects, before all four blokes returned. The encore served up ‘A Day in the Life’, from the ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ album and a reprise of ‘Revolution1’. At the end, a small boy went on stage to dance and sing along with the band. Boosted onto the piano by Jamieson, he was so good that it was hard to believe that it wasn’t a set-up. However, a gob smacked Rogers assured us of its genuine spontaneity.
They may not quite be Australia’s Fab Four, but there’s plenty of star power in the air when Tim Rogers, Chris Cheney, Phil Jamieson and Josh Pyke get together. They’re touring (once again) their tribute to The Beatles’ self-titled 1968 release colloquially known as The White Album, and the Sydney Opera House has filled four times over for the occasion.
It’s a surprise, therefore, to witness a docile crowd welcoming Cheney with only muted applause for ‘Back In The U.S.S.R.’. There a few key songs that were always bound to define this project as a success or failure, and the McCartney penned opener is one of them. So is ‘Dear Prudence’, led by Jamieson, which despite the 18 musicians onstage for this rendition, gets nowhere near the shimmering magnificence of the original. And it takes two drummers to do what Ringo did by himself 46 years ago.
The first real wave of enthusiasm spreads across the Concert Hall for ‘Ob-La-Di,Ob-La-Da’ – as a song, it’s one of The Beatles’ worst kitschy crimes, but it’d be unfair to deny the fun that it creates for this audience. Cheney, Jamieson and Pyke share the stage for this one, before the self-appointed rock star of the group makes his arrival in Rogers.The You Am I frontman seems to insist that his hungover monologue is the one consistent presence that ties the whole show together, but frankly, his bravado act gets tiresome.
Not so Cheney’s, as ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ lifts much of the audience to its feet. As ever, some of The Beatles’ songs sit better in certain hands than others, and Cheney’s treatment of George Harrison’s tune (and Eric Clapton’s solo) is exultant. Pyke is a natural fit for the softer tracks – ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Mother Nature’s Son’ especially – while Jamieson seems happy to ham things up, so it’s fair enough that he gets ‘Don’t Pass Me By’.
By no means is The Beatles a flawless album – even the most popular group in musical history made its mistakes – but this all-Australian ensemble does a commendable job in reflecting the source material fairly. It’s just a shame that The Beatles never actually get a mention in all the self-congratulation that goes on here. Still, the Rogers/Cheney/Jamieson/Pyke group could do worse than tour Rubber Soul or Abbey Road, perhaps – because if all those songs haven’t yet grown dated, they won’t anytime soon.
We get Josh Pyke, Chris Cheney, Tim Rogers and Phil Jamieson to tell us about the return of the White Album tour.
Josh Pyke Which track on the White Album do you think you could listen to indefinitely and why? I think Revolution Number 9 has enough crazy sounds in there to occupy the mind for eternity. It might be an uncomfortable experience, but it wouldn’t get boring.
Choose one: John, Paul, George or Ringo. Why? I read once that when Paul was asked “What is it like being the best songwriter in the world?” he replied, “I don’t know, ask Neil Finn.” That’s a nice thing to say… I’ve also read he’s a ruthless business man, and was frustratingly perfectionist. He was also the “cute” one. So I dunno, I think on balance there’s enough going on there that even without the amazing songs he wrote to make him my favourite.
Finish this sentence: We’re bigger than… The Big Merino in Goulburn.
What’s something special you’ll be singing on the night? Playing Blackbird is pretty special for me… An honour, also quite scary.
The 50th anniversary of The Beatles visiting Australia is currently being celebrated: do you think your music will be remembered in 50 years? I can almost guarantee that at least two people will. But beyond that I have no idea!
Chris Cheney Which track on the White Album do you think you could listen to indef initely and why? Goodnight. Because it makes me smile but I feel sad when I hear it. Not many songs can do that.
Choose one: John, Paul, George or Ringo. Why? George. He was effortlessly cool. What pressure to compete with John and Paul’s songs but he absolutely stepped up to the plate.
Finish this sentence: We’re bigger than… The hangover that I suffered after the final show of the White Album tour five years ago?
What’s something special you’ll be singing on the night? Glass Onion. How kooky was John Lennon? The guy was nuts.
The 50th anniversary of The Beatles visiting Australia is currently being celebrated: do you think your music will be remembered in 50 years? Perhaps by a select few!
Phil Jamieson Which track on the White Album do you think you could listen to indefinitely and why? Tricky question this one. I am unsure if I could actually could pick one song to listen to indefinitely unfortunately. If I am allowed to pick five? Happiness Is A Warm Gun, Honey Pie, Piggies, Blackbird, I’m So Tired… not necessarily in this particular order. The thing I love about the White Album is its variety, so choosing just one song takes away the magic somewhat for me.
Choose one: John, Paul, George or Ringo. Why? There is a lot of choosing one thing in this questionnaire? I’ll go with Ringo. Why? It seems the right thing to do.
Finish this sentence: We’re bigger than… The dining table. Well, my dining table that is. If you combined us all… the four of us? Tim, Chris, Josh and I? Or the whole touring band??? The touring band is probably bigger than a bus. Perhaps not as tall. It kind of depends. Are you stacking us on top of each other?
What’s something special you’ll be singing on the night? Don’t Pass Me By. It was written by Ringo. It went to #1 in Denmark so it’s probably more special for the Danes but it’s an oddity on the White Album and that’s why I think it’s special.
The 50th anniversary of The Beatles visiting Australia is currently being celebrated: do you think your music will be remembered in 50 years? If DCx3 isn’t being covered in 100 years I’ll eat my hat.
Tim Rogers Which track on the White Album do you think you could listen to indefinitely and why? Savoy Truffle. Was my favourite as a kid and I never knew why. And I still don’t. Lick the mystery.
Choose one: John, Paul, George or Ringo. Why? Stuart Sutcliffe. For his cheekbones and early quiff.
Finish this sentence: We’re bigger than… The illicit dreams in your noggin.
What’s something special you’ll be singing on the night? Serenading Philip to sleep each night.
The 50th anniversary of The Beatles visiting Australia is currently being celebrated: do you think your music will be remembered in 50 years? I’d prefer to be remembered for my “unique” looks.
The Pants Collective is the solo product from Living End drummer Andy Strachan. His first foray into band leading is an accessible listen, but it rarely seems interested in pushing the envelope. This debut EP hews closely to the attitude and aesthetic scope of The Living End, but it doesn’t necessarily sound like the output of Strachan’s day job.
The seven-track release begins with the cartoon-like garage blues of ‘Secrets’, before getting more debauched (and less effective) on chunky rocker ‘It’s Gonna Be Fine’. It gets more interesting when Strachan shifts into gears he’s less familiar with. ‘You’ll Never Know’ dons a hazy ’90s pop-rock visage, while two-faced EP closer ‘Hometown’ evolves from a neo-reggae experiment into a pub rock anthem. Strachan’s voice is by no means laughable, but it’s not a striking feature. Accordingly, nothing of lingering curiosity is said during the set’s 24-minute run time. Nevertheless, Strachan does show promise as a songwriter. These songs would surely benefit from someone with pronounced on-record character revving them up.
Similar to how films that don’t require particular patience or attention to detail are the most suitable for in-flight viewing, this is easy to digest, but it mightn’t have you raving to your friends at journey’s end.
