- Aussie guitar-throwbacks Golden Fang mix up the sound of a lot of bands and if you’re going to draw any kind of line connecting all of them, you could do worse than noting the countrified, gothic tinge that twists much of their music. Carl Redfern’s rich and sweet baritone can make everything seem a little less threatening than it actually is, but if you listen to the lyrics -see opener Clouds Go Round, for example- it could be an upbeat country-rocker: “but each day I’m here, feels a little more like hell” croons Redfern. Golden Fang’s new album, here. now here. is quintessential rock, loaded with Australiana and all connected by a web of darkness.
For all that their songwriting can make it seem like they're in the grip of some draining, chronic depression, Golden Fang have been releasing albums at a near-alarming rate: just about one a year since 2016. Given their expansive love of the rock music from the last forty years, maybe they feel like they have too much ground to cover to waste time. It can make it a little hard to get a fix on the Sydney outfit. One moment you’ll be thinking oh, this sounds like Buffalo Tom, then it’ll be, no, Bush, no The Drones, Jack Ladder, wait, no, Big Star! I’m not the only one, as it turns out, which makes me glad. Their latest presser expects you to hear Pixies, Straitjacket Fits, Bad Seeds, The Cruel Sea, Peabody, Bluebottle Kiss and Crow in short order.
Often the music goes pound for pound with the darkness of the lyrics, like the surging of guitar fuzz that heralds, with thunder, the beginning of each verse in Don’t Take Your God To Town. These tales of small-town despair don’t stop the band from reveling in their themes like the indulgent but excellent Cowboy For Love. “Yeah he’s out on the range with a big sky above!” It’s not all thunder either, Savage Beauty is a cool change with long, quiet and restfully bluesy verses that builds to electric peaks in the chorus; it’s a nice contrast to split the center of the record.
Spooners Lookout starts out with similar softness, but quickly builds in urgency and anticipation, hinting at something between a lover’s tryst and a brutal death, hidden up in the leafy and lonely isolation. Golden Fang like to drop dark hints about the horrors of the outback and this, I think, is their most effective stab at that. It’s a classic trope in Australiana: terrifying ourselves with thoughts of what might happen, out amongst the scrub, miles from anywhere.
As if the band were a bit unnerved by their own brutality, they pull out some jaunty rockers to cheer up the listeners in the home strait of here. now here. The great big pub rock’n’roll is still dosed with lyrical poison, however with dourness like “Waiting for the other shoe to drop / Living your life / Like you're crawling around on the floor of a truck stop / You’re no better, no better baby” in Ain’t Life Cruel. The attempt at enthusiastic energy slumps before the end of the record and a slow-burn tension returns in the form of a very direct nod to Straitjacket Fits and classic Flying Nun sounds on Tonight We’re Gonna Party Like It’s Dunendin 1989. Just so we don’t feel like opening our wrists at the end of the record, we get a dose of bittersweet nostalgia in a tribute to a Northern Sydney childhood riding bikes up Roly Poly Hill in Denistone, although it still has some jagged glass in the mix with shadowy but unexplained references to ‘catholic collars’ and ‘bankers between the sheets’; it’s probably better we don’t find out.
here. now here. continues Golden Fang’s trip through classic guitar-rock, matched with an equally classic Australiana. Like the third drink on a Saturday afternoon Golden Fang give us a sentimental surge that infuses everything with a rosy glow. Listen carefully however and you'll hear the memories of some aging pub drunk, sodden with old, sour beer and bitter regret.
- Chris Cobcroft.