Slug Guts
Down On The Meat
12 Track, LP (2009, Stained Circles)
Related: Slug Guts.
Shall I talk about the elephant in the room or ignore it? See, I quite like Slug Guts, and their label Stained Circles usually exhibits impeccable taste, so I’m reluctant to state the obvious and mention that this Brisbane band appears to have lifted large chunks of their sound and attitude from a couple of well-known Australian bands, namely Bird Blobs and The Birthday Party.
That makes it hard for me to give an unbiased assessment of the 12 songs on this disc. I really want to be impressed by the fact that they recorded the entire album in seven hours. I would also love to comment favourably on the sound of these recordings – equal parts spaciousness and claustrophobia. I love the chunky, yet clattering basslines, stumbling all over the place and bumping into the liquor cabinet. I appreciate the caterwauling guitars sounding like a bunch of felines strapped together and suspended over a vat of boiling oil. There are the menacing drums, with just enough reverb to give it that ringing snare sound that feels like being whacked around the head with a large dead fish. Repeatedly.
And then there’s the voice. As far as strangulated growls go, it’s technically great, but you know what? It just doesn’t ring true to my ears. When The Jesus Lizard’s David Yow does his thing, I can’t help but believe he’s a degenerate’s degenerate. When Captain Beefheart rasps his stumblebum mutant blues, you can hear he’s just wandered in from the wasteland of the Mojave desert. It’s hard for me to take Slug Guts’ redneck tales of Far North Queensland backwaters seriously. Not because they’re not drawn from real life, but because I find it difficult to picture these skinny inner-city hipsters mixing it up with psychopaths, prostitutes and inbred white trash.
Does it matter? Nick Cave made a career of writing about a cultural landscape he absorbed second-hand through fiction – the mythical deep south of America, straight out of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, so far removed from his formative years at Caulfield Grammar. So why shouldn’t I allow these guys some creative leeway?
It comes back to the fact that their music, while brilliantly executed, just isn’t really theirs. This isn’t a problem restricted to Slug Guts alone. Melbourne bands like The Dead South and Sailors And Swine have previously suffered from similar issues and as a result managed to alienate as many music fans as they have attracted. Really, if music is nothing but a facsimile of somebody else’s artistic innovations, why bother at all?
Still, there is a potential for greatness in Slug Guts’ music. I’m hoping their next release will see them using their considerable musical talents to find their own artistic identity and come up with a killer bunch of songs that represent more than a catalogue of their collective influences.
by René Schaefer
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In the vein of the much-missed Flip Out and the recent Maggot Fest co…
– Resurgent ’90s stalwarts Jebediah will drop their new album Kosciusz…
Brisbane’s Slug Guts have just finished work on a new LP, the follow-…
After a successful debut in Sydney last week, the Flip Out festival ma…
i feel the same conflict. they have impressed me live though.
very well written piece here.
Slug Guts are wicked, can't wait to buy this record.
Yeah, good piece.
wicked, hmm I've been listening to too much jungle
are they actually hipsters?
Tune in for the debate at 6:30pm.
We're the fattest, ugliest hipsters you'll ever meet.
are you in the band falco? if so who is your bigger influence: lubricated goat or the birthday party because i don't hear birthday party in your music but i hear the goat. also are your shirts ironed in that promo shot?
cool album cover!
is this at missing link yet?
SLUG GUTS!!!
Ha ha Slug Guts don't sound like the Birthday Party and nor do the Bird Blobs! Slug Guts might sound like the Bird Blobs but they also sound like many other bands that the Bird Blobs would have lifted thier sound from.
One more point from Curly Jobson - you can't be a hipster and be from Brisbane! I like to think Slug Guts are punks. The proof will be in the pudding though I haven't seen them live yet!
i havent seen em live yet either so ill have to reserve judgement on them. but i do like the sound of the record.
And as for the authenticity of the likes of David Yow quoting his wikipedia entry
''According to his close friend and recording engineer Steve Albini, Yow is an accomplished cook and has worked in several restaurants in Austin, Texas and Chicago, Illinois. [3] Yow also has an extensive resume of graphic design work. He is known in his field for retouching photographs and is a former employee of Upshot, an advertising agency. Yow also recorded a commentary track for Tool's DVD single ''Schism'' in 2005.''
captain beefheart was also a middle class art school drop out too and i honestly reckon nick cave has as much authenticity as Bert Newton
now im willing to bet $10 that at least on of the slug guts dudes has worked in hospitality at some stage and/or had some kind of crack at art school. this makes em every bit as authentic as any of the artists mentioned above (and they havent had anything to with tool yet either so there one point ahead in my book!)
There's nothing wrong with slightly derivative bands as long as they're derivative of good music and they play it as though they invented it them selves. i look forward to seeing them
wow bugsy, you should be a defence attorney
nah im bored.........
DENNY CRANE
anyway P max is the most authentic person in Australia full stop. next to him everthing is phony and fake
My mum ironed my shirt for me
onya mum. you know what the funniest thing is, as i recall, the bird blobs were always cained for their plaguerising of birthday party (when it should’ve clearly been beefheart!) and now, just a few years they are the influence! things move fast in the indie world.
Yeah I thought that was weird too, but then, for a lot of Australian bands the zeitgeist still lies in St Kilda circa late 1970s. It's funny cause I hear that part of town is pretty shit nowadays.
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Yeh sorry to disappoint, but not true. You owe M+N $10. Travelled and worked in hospitality. What kind of a wild guess is that anyway??
fuckin oi Flaco if thats you pick up ya phone cunt I want that 40 back today
swap 'literature' for 'albums', and there might be some healthy advice here...
jimi and the wild boys said for me to tell ya to stick ya healthy advice in ya works and bang it cunt
Hi Michael. Hi Thomas. It's good that you've been able to take time out of your busy schedules to favour us with your witty and informative posts.
I know some people may have suggested that you're both pathetic, cowardly child-men who post horrible things about people on the internet that you are far too timid to ever bring up in real life, but I think you're alright (not to mention hilarious).
I hear you boys are both newly single. Chicks, eh? I feel your pain, but hopefully this means you'll have even more time on your hands to share your always interesting thoughts with us. I guess you must have a lot on your plates already, what with the crying while masturbating and posting on the Time Off message board, but I for one would be delighted if you would keep up with the edgy and entertaining posts.
Keep it real, boys.
yeah tripper whatever
what the fuck? newcastle pub dialogue on mess and noise?
some dead shit just got ousted
Jimi Kritzler
149 gregory terrace
spring hill 4000
(0413207350.
Instead of spreading blantantly untrue and pretty fucked up shit accross every message board you can find, come over and have a fucking chat and look me in the eye.
(also Strictly and Unvisible are not in the band
........not to sound arrogant but no one in our band would bother defending ourselves on an internet forum unless some anonymous people were intent on spreading malicious and bullshit rumours about our personal lives. Thanks heaps for making today that little bit more fucked)
1981 were an ok band.
Of all the things they could say about you, Jimi K, why would anyone pick something untrue?
This is all very confusing. I've officially given up on trying to make sense of this thread.
Thank you and good night.
maybe we should start over, hi!
is your name on the lease / are you the home owner because i only talk to the man of the house
oi unvisible you chinless wonder. why dont you come around to my house and talk to me in my eyes about it. i might even put up the funds for that chin implant surgery, nah sucked in cunt. you'll get nothing
I just bought this record...and then read the thread...I'm really confused
Pretty late to this party, but hey, I live in a time warp.
I've heard bits and bobs of Slug Guts and then got pointed to this review and it's one of those things that almsot exactly invokes what it is that I think music criticism should do, and that's be constructive. What we have in Slug Guts is a band that has pretty genuine potential to be something really fine that hasn't quite found it's feet yet. Rene is urging them to think harder and try less up there and it's good advice.
As a side note, originality is the most over-rated concept of the 21st century. it's 2011, and being original has been done to death, and it lergely relied on deft use of the latest techonological innovation anyway. If people want to tread a well worn path, then good luck and do it well.
All the comparisons are quite fair, but the only real touchstone of great and original art is Beefheart. The Birthday Party, The Jesus Lizard and Slug Guts are all sipping at the crow-man's cup and why the hell shouldn't they? I'd rather listen to something veering into that territory than a whole lot of 'original' shite. Just write some good songs and get on with it.
Oh and one other thing - there's something funny about Slug Gut getting stick for 'sounding like' when there's so many bands kicking around that sound like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of The Clean. And that's also NOT A BAD THING BY ANY MEANS, but open your eyes a bit people.
name names or it's not true
Woollen Kits have a total Dunedin vibe. I really like them as well. Panel of Judges have been in the basket for years, and they're consistently one of Melbourne's finest. White Woods. The Twerps - hey they even HAVE A NEW ZEALANDER, can you beat that?
All excellent bands I dig as well. nothing wrong AT ALL with having influences.
ha, didn't think you would go for it. i think woolen kits are more beat happening/olympia washington, personally, but that's just me. haven't heard the others
Well I'd claim Beat Happening have a Dunedin influence as well, but THEN AGAIN you can just piss THAT off and say ''Velvet Undergound'' about the lot of them.
hence my point about originality and suchlike. There really isn't all that much of it, and there's NO guarantee that 'original = good'.
there's hardly ten things that you could REALLY come up with that you could say were totally without precedent. The only one I can think of right now is Kraftwerk, and I'm probably wrong. Maybe Crass.