Reviewed on Sunday September 4.
‘Poetry’ is a dead word. These days it only gets applied to a very certain subsect of creative endeavour; to the kind of wanky, paper-thin decorative verse that references a life of beauty and dignity that not many of us gronks actually lead.
It would not usually, for example, get applied to a group like Scabz, the self-proclaimed shittest band in Newtown. But make no mistake: Scabz are a pack of poets, albeit the kind more likely to talk about a night on dingers than flowers in a vase or dew collecting on a summer’s day.
They are also some of the finest performers to emerge on the Sydney scene for a fucking age. Taking to their stage and spiritual home, The Townie, with equal parts spasm and swagger, they pounded out a set both polished and putrid, seguing from one spat out tune to the next.
Songs rear-ended each other, and blink-and-you’ll miss them punches of melody were quickly swapped for sing-spoken ballads that felt like tunes composed by Robert Forster reeling with a meth addiction. But ultimately a tune like ‘Straight Girls’ works not only because it’s spoken in a voice utterly lacking pretension, but because it’s a bloody great song, full of the kind of simple pleasures that mark out the discography of Shonen Knife and The Descendents.
But Scabz are neither of those bands. The term ‘unique’ is horrendously overused these days, but Scabz are that; a band that truly sound like no other, and an act so distinctly unafraid that they drunkenly stumble into the territory of out-and-out genius.
Throughout their set, there was not a wasted moment or a single bored audience member to be found. Indeed, though the band’s aesthetic is distinctly lo-fi (check out their Sizzler-shot film clip) they are a collective of supremely skilled musicians, performers with an impeccable sense of control and composition.
‘Beach Song’, a tune that blathers around the place brilliantly, lovingly punching the listener just a little too hard right on the arm, proved as taut as cheese wire, boasting one of the most singularly shoutable choruses of recent memory. It’s not just perfect, it’s piss-stained, and every single bar of it rang true.
I’ll be real with you: I don’t know what the point of music journalism is if it’s not to recommend you bands like Scabz. Go to their shows. Download their next single. Make ‘em famous so they can dine at Sizzler’s every night and develop healthy, all-encompassing cocaine addictions. And treat em right. Because they’re not only a bunch of fuckin’ poets, ay, they’re one of the best bands Sydney has.
