A ONCE & FUTURE THING - The
Pubert Brown Fridge Occurrence (Laughing
Outlaw)
X man Steve Lucas and friends have delivered an album completely out of step
with anything else. Which you'd have to guess is exactly what was intended.
The Pubert Brown Bridge Occurrence (ask about the name and you'll get a different
answer everytime) is the 
sound
of the Kinks meeting the Small Faces in the Scotch On St James club, well after
closing time with all concerned truly ripped out of their minds. It's a some
loose amalgam of Brit pop-psych and music hall overtones with pieces of grit
collected from the floor of the UFO Club on the soles of someone's Beatles boots.
The Pubert Fridge Brown Occurrence (that's hard to type, kids, so it's PBFO
from here on in) had its beginnings in Saturday afternoon jams by Steve Lucas
and a few Sydney acquaintances. Steve swapped guitar for keyboards, for the
most part. Old Kinks fan, Gentleman Jim Dickson, lately of Radio Birdman but
a member of so many other bands (Louis Tillett, Penny Ikinger, Lipstick Killers)
he must need a personal assistant to organise rehearsal dates, brought along
his bass. X bandmate Geoff Holmes fronted with his guitar and John Butler's
presence on drums made it a band.
This isn't the first time Steve Lucas has indulged a need to stretch his musical
legs outside the sometimes rigid confines of X. From collaborations with the
folky White Cross to the '70s raunch of A.R.M. and the theatrically metallic
attack of Bigger Than Jesus, he's been down a few side tracks. The common thread
is there's always been a deep and abiding love of rock and roll in its most
purest guises, as well as a sense of humour. Both abound on this album.
A deconstruction of the Moptops' "Eight Days a Week", done in heavy
psych style, opens "A Once and Future Thing" and confirms that this
is going to be an unusual outing. There's a whiff of something in the air and
it's not the Maharishi's farts. (The Fridge do a neat cover of "Tin Soldier"
live but evidently it didn't make the cut.) "Sleepy Jan" marries rusty-edged
Townsend guitar to throbbing bass and Moon-like fills to a recorder solo and
a lyric about, well, Jan's love of a good kip.
"Make It Happen" is the bounciest tune here, an ode to under achievement
with an irrepressible smile on its dial. Move over Stevie Marriott. The vocal
follows the melody line and it's handclaps all round as the rest of the Fridge
get into the act on vocals, a la something off "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake".
The sounds of someone's (presumably Steve's) fucked up attempts to play "Greensleaves"
on glockenspiel are left intact as a between-track piece filler. Snatches of
sound effects duck in and out throughout the disc, adding to the sense of absurdity.
Rebecca Hancock's backing vocals add some sweet texture to a few songs and nowhere
to better effect than on the jaunty "Love is a Virus" and the seaside
feel of "The Ice Cream Song", the latter a big sounding, speculative
relationship song that's nowhere as heavy as the description I just used.
"Love is a Virus" is the Fridge in electric musical hall mode. Fab
keyboards and Rickenbacker propel "Come Friday Afternoon", another
Kinksy track leavened by Rebecca Hancock and a call and response count-off by
the band of the weekdays. The entire album is far from light and bright pop
all the way through; "Bite the Sun", for example, is a shift to '70s
psych territory, vaguely Eastern in its melody.
The diehards expressed a murmur of regret after PBFO's live debut just over
a year or so ago because X they ain't - a short-sighted view as there's nothing
around I can think of that is. If you're an X-ophile, you will recognise the
closing track, "Don't Cry No Tears" (renamed "Don't Cry, No Tears"
here) , which has been a staple since the "At Home With You". It's
also maybe the best song ever to carry S. Lucas authorship. Here, it's given
a straight reading but is fleshed out with strings and keys from recent X collaborator
John Gaucci, rounding things off nicely. It's also the cut where the trademark
Lucas howl really slips the leash and there's some tasty guitar from him and
Geoff Holmes.
This is probably the only album you'll buy this year with kazoo. It's all a
little trippy, very dippy and very much like the Kinks in what "Ugly Things"
magazine calls their Crushed Velvet Phase, which'd be around the time of the
"Kinks Kontroversy" album. As the band's web
site says: "The Fridge's contents are always cool". You have no
choice but to concur. Grab a cold one and go for a ride. - The
Barman
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