Missing apostrophe notwithstanding, The Dacios 'Monkeys Blood' is a modern rock’n’roll classic, writes RENÉ SCHAEFER.

Could Monkeys Blood be the best Australian rock’n’roll record of the decade? I would like to think that in years to come this album will be regarded as highly as (I’m) Stranded, X-Aspirations, Blood Red River or Life Was Better, but only time will truly tell.

In the meantime, the seven songs on The Dacios’ debut are some of the most passionate, propulsive and downright dirty noise ever to jump out of your speakers, shirtfront you and hurl you across the room. Monkeys Blood (damn the missing apostrophe) is a record to crank up all the way and get yourself lost in. In every way it’s the polar opposite of all those safe, market-researched, focus group tested musical “units” that are shoved down consumers’ necks by hyperventilating record companies.

The difference starts with the sound. Fidelity is sacrificed for feel, precision for raw emotion. This is the sound of people making a racket in a room, shouting over each other to make themselves heard above ear-piercing amplifier squalls. This kind of performance can’t be cleaned up and neutered to suit ridiculous radio broadcasting standards or marketing strategies. Maybe that’s why it has taken a while for Monkeys Blood to be released, but it's finally brought to us by Solar/Sonar, an independent label run by Tom Lyngcoln of stalwart punk band The Nation Blue.

Crucial to The Dacios’ brand of intensity is the songwriting partnership of Dannie “Bean” Johnston and his sister Linda. Even before forming the revered Hobart punk band Little Ugly Girls in the early 1990s, the guitarist and singer had developed a complex love/hate relationship and creative rapport, stemming from an insular upbringing in the stifling Tasmanian backwater of Smithton. The two siblings shared a burning desire to pursue what few creative avenues were open to them, whether it be visual art, writing or music.

Saved from normality by rock’n’roll, Bean has, over the years, refined and pared back his guitar playing to the absolute essence of “the riff”. On first impression, his style may recall The Stooges’ Ron Asheton or Sonic Boom, but whereas the latter’s band Spacemen 3 expressed a narcotic stupor, Bean invests his playing with the relentless boogie churn of AC/DC’s Malcolm Young. The simplicity of the playing is deceptive, as repetition and volume open up a whole new array of sonic possibilities, explored by far too few musicians in a rock band context.

Joined on Monkeys Blood by their younger brother Robert “Pops” Johnston on drums and Kirsty Stegwazi (The Bites, Hand Hell) on bass, The Dacios are an eight-legged riff machine. When everybody hammers the same chord, Linda contributing additional rhythm guitar, they create a wall of sound to scare the living daylights out of Phil Spector.

All of this would already mark The Dacios as a compelling rock’n’roll act, but what sets them apart from the great mass of aspiring garage punks is the raw-throated, adrenaline-charged voice of Linda Johnston and, most importantly, her unique ability as a writer. A great believer in the somewhat unfashionable notion that song lyrics matter, there is nothing commonplace or cliched about her narratives. Each one treads the fine line between personal reflection, storytelling and a love of poetic word-play. Like her forebears Patti Smith and Kat Bjelland from Babes In Toyland, in writing from a female perspective, she projects both strength and vulnerability without making the potentially alienating mistake of badgering listeners with sexual politics.

“Fidelity is sacrificed for feel, precision for raw emotion. This is the sound of people making a racket in a room, shouting over each other to make themselves heard above ear-piercing amplifier squalls.”

Opening song ‘Liberty Lovers’ tells the story of two girls’ drunken night out, cavorting with a group of Russian sailors. Describing in equal measures the women’s lustful fascination, the potential threat, and contrasting these with female romantic fantasies, the writer refuses to pass judgement on her subjects one way or the other. The driving rhythm of the music perfectly captures the sense of urgency and ambiguity of the situation. Title track ‘Monkeys Blood’ manages to deal with a one-sided romantic obsession without coming across as weak or insecure. The thoughtless lover may not call but, “When you’re in a heart/Ain’t nothin gonna shift ya.”

Meanwhile, ‘Grey Machine’ – one of the album’s bleakest tracks –bristles with existential dread: “The day you went away/A grey machine, it came to stay/With only bad blood thick and cold/Coursing through its veins/…/In bed at night it holds me tight/Under dirty covers pretending we are lovers/With no name or face.”

‘Buzzard’s Hide’ (note the apostrophe) harks back to the early days of The Dacios, when they were a fledgling two-piece with Linda on guitar and Bean on drums. Rather than re-record the song with a full band, it stands here as one of those demos that perfectly captures a moment in time. In contrast, ‘Monica’ and ‘Girl In The Mirror’ are ferocious rockers built around grinding, metallic guitar repetition and primitive drum pounding. It’s not all Sturm und Drang though – the album closes with an acoustic number, ‘Shoe Size’, which provides a welcome tonal contrast to the preceding onslaught. With its sparse, almost alt-country feel and slide guitar outro, ‘Shoe Size’ is a link to the Johnston siblings’ other musical project, The Bulls. Initially the song’s lyric may seem oblique, but it makes sense when you find out that it was inspired by a news report concerning Thai teenage prostitutes who drugged and robbed their wealthy western johns.

Linda’s collage cover artwork perfectly complements the music. In her choice of style and imagery, she manages to reference both the cut-and-paste aesthetic of Riot Grrrl and early 20th Century Dadaist artists Hannah Höch and George Grosz, striking the same balance between underground pop culture and avant-garde ideas that informs The Dacios’ music.

To cap things off, the striking front cover photograph depicts Bean and Linda as children, posed in monkey masks, in front of their mother’s camera. It’s an odd picture, so very un-rock’n’roll, and could very easily be read as a throw-away quirky image in the vein of all those animal suit dress-ups inspired by the films of Harmony Korine. Except, there is something so creepy and blank-looking about the masks that it’s hard not to look for a subtext in its choice to visually represent the band.

In Monkeys Blood, the Johnstons have created one of the most powerful Australian albums in a long time. It may be rough around the edges, and not for everyone, but that’s rock’n’roll, isn’t it?

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The Dacios’ Monkeys Blood is out June 26 through Solar/Sonar.