it records

Alright. Where I live, the formal lockdown measures ended in early 2022.

Personally, I think one reason the employment rate is so low right now is because a whole pile of people around retirement age, or quite a few reluctant to retire, realised that hanging about the house wasn't such a bad thing after all. 

In fact, life itself wasn't meant to be spent piss-farting about in a drab office trying not to grimace at the forced jollities, the strict dweebness and the sheer bloody pointlessness of necessary screenwork. Sure, some things need to be done. But we seemed to get by without a hell of a lot of it during lockdown.

And don't get me started on the poor bastards who worked through the pandemic, the nurses and doctors who (as far as I'm concerned) all deserve a 10 percent wage rise (and, for those who actually worked with the Covid patients, an Order of Australia each).

Atom have been playing around Melbourne for several years, and this is partly the result. I say 'partly' because I know they have other songs up their sleeves (and a few deft covers), and also because they're most engaging live, drawing you in like a nurse soothes a muscle-man pretending he doesn't have a fear of needles.

Those of you alert to the ways of the musical underground will recognise at once that this is another brainchild of Harry Howard and Edwina Preston. With the first track, 'Run Out', we're right there in that cut-up era Harry and Ed have created for themselves (somewhere between 1958 and 1989, it seems). In a different place and time, they'd have John Peel thrashing Atom's every B-side while turfing The Cure and The Mission sessions into the archives.

Allowing for a near death experience and a lengthy hiatus, they’ve been around for 20 years. It’s been more than a decade since their last album. So does Rocket Science still matter? Yes.

“Snake” is their fifth long-player and in the genre classification stakes, Rocket Science is still playing hard to get. Psych-rock? Post-punk garage rock? Trashy new wave? Whatever you want to label them, go right ahead, it’s probably fine by them. The one thing we can all agree on is that “Snake” is one very dark hombre of an album.

Dark, you say? Whatever do you mean? It is hard to out a finger on. It doesn't have to be explicitly stated in the lyrics or through minor chords. In the case of "Snake", it's a mood thing and very much a sum of the band's parts.