4/5 stars
There were two kids at high school back in the mid-’80s who carried cans of spray paint, defacing everything from the doors of the school train to the desks in the local council chamber. Those kids were into skate punk and a bit of LA metal, taking little interest in the subliminally subversive Devo or the jarring one-fingered anti-pop salute of The Fall. Had it been different, those kids might have, 30 years later, embraced Austin’s Spray Paint.
Punters On A Barge, the second Spray Paint record released locally on Homeless Records (after last year’s equally abrasive Clean Blood, Regular Acid), is the type of record that reminds you why punk rock exists, by definition, on the margins. ‘Ian’s Theme’sets the scene with jagged chords, thrashing beats and atonal vocals; ‘Entry Level Human’is the pithy dissection of humanity that Devo always wanted to commit to record; the brutal consistency of ‘Polar Beer’ is metaphor for the monotony of contemporary existence; and if George Brandis’ department started accompanying rejections for arts funding with ‘I Hate Your Paintings’, he’d make some unlikely friends.
The world isn’t the sugary place some would like us to believe it is, and Spray Paint know just that.
Spray Paint’s Punters On A Barge is available on Homeless.
