The Necks: Three | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- I feel like I should start this review with an apology. It’s kind of ridiculous that -every time- when I approach a new record by The Necks, I always do my head in with the meta conversation about what type of band is this, anyway? Are they jazz or an endless backing track? Are they experimental or just trucking infinite mindlessness? Are they some kind of live, traditionally orchestrated spin on techno? Would that relieve them of the unasked for intellectual burden placed upon them?? As a result, I find myself in danger of missing the music altogether, as I wrap it up in layers of obscuring thought and harshly reductive musical ideology. Really, you’d do much better to approach it just like their little legion of hardcore fans. Embrace the other inescapable mind**** that is The Necks and surrender yourself to the epic tracts of swirling sound: let them do your head in on their own terms.

That’s almost how they do it themselves. Chris Abrahams (on keys, among many other things), Lloyd Swanton (on bass) and Tony Buck (on a cacophony of percussion) have taken improvisation to an extreme, an almost Zen vacuity. When they get in the studio and even on stage, there is no plan. Whatever happens, happens and that’s that. They’ve explored just how little mental and physical effort they can put into the creation of music; for evidence see a recording like Mosquito. You can begin to understand why this outfit excites controversy on occasion.  However, the three gentlemen are completely unfazed by what unflattering things others may think. They’ve maintained their plan, or complete lack of one, over the course of nearly thirty studio records and side-project releases and thirty-two years of live performance. Just by the way, apparently there’s a truly vast trove of The Necks’ live work that hasn’t been released. A great flood from their collective id, just waiting for the trio to pass on so that enthusiastic archive-divers can dig up and release the lot.

No danger of their collective demise anytime soon, it seems. The band have plotted an ambitious touring schedule for 2020 and have just released a new record, even after the gallivanting round through various collaborations with Underworld and The Swans in 2019. Their latest head-trip is Three and as per the title, it’s classic Necks: three twenty minute cuts, they can hardly be described as drifting, because they pack great intensity indeed. The opening number, Bloom, is not messing around: the percussion bangs like an ancient, poorly maintained motor - the ‘bloom’ must be the slowly enveloping headache it brings on! Swanton’s bass wraps a syncopated bar structure around the explosion of noise and Abrahams twists through the gaps with a sinuous piano lead. Development comes in a surreptitious post-rock form: as a background of buzzing, but tuneful, synthetic harmony wells up, louder and louder. After an age, chiming sounds like the end of shift for this factory of percussion, or perhaps an alarm, heralding the imminent failure of this mechanical beast.

Lovelock is -so Lloyd Swanton says- a tribute to the late Damien Lovelock, beloved rapscallion frontman of the classic Australian band The Celibate Rifles. Lovelock was a colourful character and sometimes, a hard-luck guy, but the eeriness of this number -the swelling cymbals, insistent guitar, floating chimes, ghostly piano and so much atmosphere- seems to paint him as haunted. Whatever else it is -it sure doesn’t sound like The Rifles- it’s a gloriously spooky track, the sort of thing you can imagine as an alternate soundtrack to The Fog, more than anything else.

A sharp and somehow elegant contrast, final cut Further struts thanks to that syncopated kit. A cutlery draw’s worth of shimmering, shaking metal rings overhead, somewhere near the similarly chiming piano. Hidden underneath a Hammond organ gives body to the mix. Perhaps as the barest concession to the idea of being a jazz trio, they saunter along in a five-four time signature. It’s moody, like whoever’s walking along has a lot on their mind. It’s also a long walk: this final number’s extended twilight doesn’t develop quite as much as what’s come before, with the exception of Abraham’s increasingly emotive bursts of piano. Like I said, whoever’s taking this stroll, they’re thinking some heavy thoughts.

The Necks sound charged-up, like that Richard Gill Award for Services To Australian Music they got last year gave them a boost to their confidence. Not that they needed it - The Necks have been even more prolific in the last couple of years than even their own punishing benchmarks would lead you to expect. You know, I think the stuff they’ve done by themselves is the best of the lot, too. Again, it’s slightly irrelevant: those fanatical fans will gobble up the forthcoming live performances of whatever this Zen trio noodle up on the spot and it will almost certainly sound nothing like what we hear here. For the longest time The Necks have been what David Stratton once described as ‘critic-proof’. It doesn’t really matter what I say, this music will roll on.

- Chris Cobcroft.