GENTLE ASSASINS
GLEN THOMSON BAND
ADELINE
@ the Annandale Hotel, Sydney
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
WORDS AND PICTURES: JOHN MCPHARLIN
Gentle Assassins is the band featuring former members of Porcelain
Bus and this was to be their first public outing, which is the reason I was
here on a midweek evening. The original intention was to partake of the delights
of the Annandale's backyard Thai bistro before their set, so I got to the
Annandale in plenty of time.
In
fact I was so early that opening band Adeline had hardly gotten started and
damn if they weren't laying down a very pleasant strain of power pop, sorta
You Am I tempered with Even and an occasional hint of the Sunny Boys in some
of their lighter moments. I can see them going down very well with the same
crowd that follows the Laughing Outlaw power pop bands and I am surprised
that I hadn't heard of them before this.
So I stopped to listen to a couple of songs and ended up staying for their
entire set, only to find when I got out there afterwards that the bistro had
just closed (announced in that brusque, but mock regretful tone that restaurant
staff reserve for those rare, relished moments when they get to stick it to
a customer). Needless to say I was annoyed and distressed at this turn of
events, even if I was still satisfied that the sacrifice had been worth making.
When it comes to food at that time of the night, there's fuckall else close
by the Annandale to choose from, except for the large McDonalds almost directly
across the road. Now I reckon that McDonalds is the absolute pits when it
comes to fast food (and as Flo and Eddie once asked suggestively, what's in
that special white sauce anyway?). I'll resist the temptation to go off on
an anti-McDonalds tirade at this point, instead just noting that I cannot
comprehend how it is that they have become so pervasive when almost every
fish and chip shop in this wide, brown land of ours can knock out a better
burger (and yeah, "the burgers are better at Hungry Jack's" too,
but not by much).
So hunger gnawed away at me while the bands changed over. Glen Thompson (ex-Custard
apparently) turned out to do a genial line in quirky personal pop, falling
somewhere between early Lloyd Cole and more recent David Byrne, but when he
introduced a song as "country" the die was cast and before I knew
it I was across the road shoving a soggy burger into my face. Afterwards I
felt like such a cheap slut, but at least my stomach had stopped rumbling.
The Gentle Assassins have had an interesting genesis. The pre-cursor to this
line up came together as Decapod to record a song (a cover of the Bus's "Sister's
Life") for Didier Georgieff's "Storming The Citadel" tribute
to Citadel Records, although by the time that track was mixed they'd
changed their name to Indignation (coincidentally the title of the Bus's first
single). There's a rumour that their set at the "Storming The Citadel"
end of recording party cum album launch was video taped, but I've never seen
the tape and as they were the first band of the night it goes without saying
that I arrived too late to catch their actual performance.
Subsequently they also gigged sporadically as Ashtray Heart (a clear Captain
Beefheart reference, if ever there was one), though sadly I never managed
to catch them in that guise either. Now here they were at last, back again
as the Gentle Assassins with a new drummer, Golden Rough's Andrew Lay. The
two ex-Porcelain Bus members are Rob McKiernan (guitar) and Ian Towart (a.k.a.
Ian James) on vocals. Iain Jepsen (keyboards) and James Lacey (bass) complete
the line up. An album, "They Knew Too Much" ("12 tracks of
pop that bite you on the arse"), is said to be well on the way.
Although
the core creative team is the same as it was for Porcelain Bus, I was warned
that the Assassins would be quite different to the Bus. However Ian Towart's
vocals are so distinctive in their unholy union of Iggy Pop, Tom Waits and
Captain Beefheart (sometimes on his own account and sometimes channeling the
shade of Elvis Presley), that reverberations of Porcelain Bus are always going
to be audible in the background of any track he sings on.
The addition of the keyboards probably makes the biggest difference. Where
the sound of the Bus was basically sparse guitar pop, like a darker, disturbed
version Lloyd Cole and the Commotions (I saw Lloyd Cole playing a solo show
late last year, so he's been stalking my unconscious lately, which probably
explains why his name has come up twice in this review), the Assassins' sound
is fuller, reminding me at different times of Simple Minds (in their louder,
rawer moments), the later Small Faces and Died Pretty (and it's probably no
accident that Brett Myers produced all of the Bus's records and now the Assassins'
record is being put out by the same label that picked up Steve Clark's solo
album).
For a band that hadn't played publicly for getting on for a couple of years,
they also sounded pretty tight for the most part and clearly still knew how
to punch out a tune so that those right at the back of the room had no trouble
feeling the breeze as it went past. Standout songs were the mocking "Everyone's
My Friend" ("All my empty friends/My sad, my bitter friends..."),
the enigmatic "City Of Veils" and one other whose name I didn't
catch... This time I'll be making sure that I don't miss them when that album
launch comes around!
