By Nathan Wood
My old band once opened up for Peabody. In fact, it was probably one of the best gigs we ever played (which isn’t saying much for a band called The Wesley Snipers). But we were tight and we rocked out hard. Fuck, I even busted out a guitar solo while sitting in someone’s lap as they sat at the bar (what a wanker – I know). But regardless, we came off stage feeling like our man bits had grown an inch and a half.
That lasted about three chords into Peabody’s set, by which stage, like a napalm raid, they’d already scorched all memories of our performance from the minds of the audience.
But what else would you expect from such a stalwart of the Sydney music scene. It feels like forever that I’ve been hearing random spins of Peabody tunes on the radio or catching one of their phenomenal live sets onstage at the Annandale, the Lansdowne and the Hopetoun (R.I.P.).
And now the Peabods have released Loose Manifesto, their fourth album but first on their own label, as well as the first without the production touches of Bluebottle Kiss frontman Jamie Hutchings. Despite these changes (or perhaps because of) Loose Manifesto is some of the band’s most impressive work to date.
Like the other great (albeit more successful) front men of his generation in The Drones’ Gareth Liddiard and You Am I’s Tim Rogers, Bruno Brayovic has always sung with proud Australian vowels, and in an easily identifiable tone and timbre that has acted as a watermark for his band’s sound from the beginning. It's these vocals that act as the guidance system on the heat-seeking missile that is Loose Manifesto; one minute he’s cruising and crooning on top of pop tracks that tilt their hat to the bands earlier, Triple J friendly career (see ‘Mirror, Mirror’ or the anthemic ‘No New Riffs’), the next he swerves and explodes into ball tearing rock songs (see ‘Choking’, ‘Already Won’ and the album’s title track).
Throughout this swerving rocket ride, Brayovic is flanked by his equally impressive band members. Guitarist Tristan Courtney-Prior is the old scool "lead guitarist", putting on a performance unmatched by many local guitar slingers, often tearing into his strings in a way that recalls the best of Sonic Youth’s chaotic style (see ’Dead Head’ and ‘It Don’t Matter’). Meanwhile, the band’s rhythm section of Jared Harrison on drums and Ben Chamie on bass, manage to provide an equally precise and thumping bedrock upon which Courtney-Prior and Brayovic's duel guitar wringing thrives.
This is not to say the album is flawless. As much as I enjoy Brayovic’s vocals, he isn’t the greatest singer of all time and sometimes his vocals overpower the music in the mix (see 'I’ve Been Waiting'). Album closer and boogie-woogie punk number ‘It Don’t Matter’, squashes the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and NOFX-style lyrics into an immature mash that doesn’t reflect well on the rest of the record; a bit of a hangnail on the album as a whole.
But Loose Manifesto is as solid as you could possibly expect from a band that has been squeezing out quality tunes and playing like their lives depended on it for well over a decade. And although they will probably never reach the critical and commercial heights of some of their contemporaries, it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop creating excellent material anytime soon. Fuck, they’ll probably outlast the entire Sydney live music scene altogether.
Unlike The Wesley Snipers (R.I.P.).
Originally published on The Vine.
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