HTRK’s long-awaited debut LP 'Marry Me Tonight' is a place where violence and intimacy terrifyingly coexist, writes SHAUN PRESCOTT.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that groups like Jet harangue our airwaves on a thrice-daily basis with their horribly retroactive dross - it seems they’re also scaring good bands away. Case in point: in 2006 HTRK left Melbourne in favour of Berlin, famously on account of their disgust at the impenetrable army of “rock revival” groups they were rubbing shoulders with. Fellow Victorians the Devastations and the Drones bulked out the mass exodus, fulfilling the familiar trajectory of Melbourne bands relocating to Europe.

Their hometown’s more derivative and regrettable musical cough-ups might have swayed them to leave, but HTRK’s long-awaited debut LP – originally slated for release as far back as 2006 - has Melbourne written all over it. Formerly known at the Hate Rock Trio, HTRK’s determination to distance themselves from the atmosphere of revivalism won’t change the fact that the Birthday Party are a notable musical influence here, reinforced by the presence of Rowland S Howard’s occasional contributions on guitar and his shared production duties with Lindsay Gravina. That band’s neurotic obsession with the sociopathic is taken to its logical conclusion on this LP.

In some ways, Marry Me Tonight shares a lot in common with The Devastations’ 2006 LP Yes U. For all the libidinous blood spilt on that album, Jonnine Standish (married, by the by, to The Devastations’ Conrad Standish) provides a sultry - often infuriatingly restrained – feminine riposte, offering up nine vivid tableaus of fucks gone horribly sour. Album opener ‘HA’ sees Standish coaxing submission, so relentlessly, repetitively, that by the end of the track the subject appears obviously unwilling. “You drink, I’ll pour the wine,” she offers over a grinding bass line, frequently shocked by caustic guitar feedback, “Can we get back together?”

For all the empowered gusto displayed in the opening track, elsewhere Marry Me Tonight is, by and large, populated by the weak and exploited. The consistently churning, suggestive depth of Sean Stewart’s bass guitar provides the innuendo that all the subjects here are dragged by inertia into their dark, salacious environs. “You’re my rose she laughs,” Standish sings during ‘Kiss Before The Fall’, a track mounted sky high by soaring synth textures - “he sighs and punched her in the nose”. Elsewhere, ‘Rent Boy’ has Standish inhabit another lost submissive soul, though the lucid melodies provide relief from the menacing distance from which HTRK usually cast their shadow.

“Their hometown’s more derivative and regrettable musical cough-ups might have swayed them to leave, but HTRK’s long-awaited debut LP … has Melbourne written all over it.”

It’s a vast distance, because the group’s consistently stalking pace seems stubbornly set upon provoking visions of romantic sleaze in widescreen. The music is so pent-up, so relentlessly sensual, that Standish’s rich voice will most likely be consigned to the role of seductress to most listeners. There’s a great deal more in these songs than that, but crucially, the ensemble has no sympathy for its subject. Harsh electronics and guitar noise incisively crest at the most fragile of moments, as on ‘Your Mistress’, while the rhythm section remains so cool, so sandblasted. It’s a tight and malevolent sex machine, but here sex is murder and love – or marriage - is a utility.

Nonchalance in the face of degradation is the prevailing register on Marry Me Tonight. Animal instinct and selfishness are the demons that drive these short narratives, each suspended on a minimally gratifying musical backdrop, rendering all the oppression, turmoil and empty sex as accepted libidinal wisdom. If you choose to dive beneath the sexier-than-thou aural surface you’ll find a terrifying undertow, a place where violence and intimacy mingle in throe with one another.

Like their Melbourne descendants, HTRK have a cross to bear, but this time around they’re revelling under the weight of it.

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HTRK’s Marry Me Tonight is out now through Blastfirstpetite.