Plaster Of Paris: Lost Familiar | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- The return of the repressed can be a messy, catastrophic affair. It opens the floodgates for torrents of stress, recriminations and righteous fury to come pouring forth. Has the recent experience of women in the entertainment industry been like this? Years of being lowballed when they’re not being ignored, when they’re not outright being abused, has mounted, resentment on resentment, until, finally, a rending scream topples the pillars in the halls of power, sending powerful, entitled men, scrambling for cover. I’m sure some of the hoary old blokes are pretty worried, like their big swinging dicks are about to be ripped out at the root. Perhaps, however, they should be even more scared of the women in Plaster Of Paris.

The band come packing all of that political rage, but that’s only part of it. They have a deep knowledge of the history that they represent: the too-oft forgotten, female pioneers of proto-punk and garage rock, through to post-punk, riot-grrrl and beyond. They can play it all adroitly and fold it into songs that are a candy-striped swirl of political bile and sweet music. Many great, female talents have been erased from the canon over the years, by the very selective male memory. It’s going to be that much harder to rub out this band: they tell the uncomfortable truths, but they also do that other thing women have always done to get ahead: they are better at the game, every single bit of it.

Lost Familiar is Plaster Of Paris’ debut full-length, folding in their very well-received 2017 7” comprising the songs Oh Wow and Newcomer, joined here by nine more, every bit their equal. Part of the reason they appear in such a polished format is that they’ve been gigging for about a decade and doing time in other bands, like Bracode and Remake Remodel healing back on into the ‘90s.

So, finally busting out of the gate, the most immediate quality of a very bold sound has to be Zec Zechner’s voice. It’s big, to be sure, but has an idiosyncracy that you’re unlikely to mistake for anyone else. I was really trying to nail it down in my mind, doing that usual music reviewer thing of trying to place it within a web of influences (because we don’t believe in originality) and I was straining my brain trying to imagine whether the punk rock acrobatics of Poly Styrene sandwiched into the very specific timbre and vibrato of Chrissy Amphlett would sound like this if you had more raw power than both, before I gave up and just enjoyed it.

I may just keep digging that hole though, because I reckon it’s a productive way of thinking about the band. Plaster Of Paris have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of their sound and the other members, guitarist Sarah Blaby and drummer Nicola Bell are equally able to cherry pick the bits they want from The Slits, or The Divinyls or Bikini Kill, whenever they want. I’m sure the guest additions of  Maddy Macfarlane’s baritone sax and Amy Chapman’s synth really help with the post-punk, too.

There’s a lot happening in this record, each song a soapbox, an anthem for an issue that Zec Zechner cares about and she’s very politically informed. Opener and new single Danceflaw, heads out the gate with a frisky dancepunk, less celebrating than ferociously staking out queer safespaces, writing in the aftermath of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Florida, Zechner bellows  “politics are red on the dancefloor!” She wastes no time, crashing into climate crisis on S.O.E: “Rivers become veins, borders I’m crossing, ring out the sirens, my body is on fire, a spiritual pyre.” It’s inexorably linked to the perversion of our politics: “this is an attack on our democracy! This is a state of emergency!” The fierceness and horror are buttressed with genuine celebration, in the form of anthems dedicated to Australian punk pioneers Mary Timony and Allison Wolfe on their eponymous odes. There’s tons here I’m leaving you to find for yourself, but it’s impossible to ignore the keystone that is closer, Newcomer. Slow and roaring guitar provides a bedrock for Zechner to shriek and wail the song of an outsider, a hungry spirit searching for identity. At one and the same time it’s a plea for salvation, searching for a place to exist and also a raw and powerful challenge - this is the time that it will happen. Taking in some of Australia’s pioneer narrative, Zechner sings: “It’s like I’m panning for gold / Turning every precious stone / Becoming like a ghost / Inside my strongest bones / Searching the highs and lows / I am searching, I’m searching, I’m searching”.

The politics, the cause, the search, the raging, it’s all ongoing isn’t it? Still it’s hard to listen to a record like this and not hear it as the sound of victory. Beneath the thunder and shrieking there’s a self-assured confidence to Plaster Of Paris. It sounds like they found that Lost Familiar for which they've been searching, the righteous strength they need to see this fight through to its conclusion.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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