- Melbourne’s Primitive Calculators are not your a-typical fun loving, good time trash band. This is particularly good news because typical bands are often a red hot garbage fire, filled to the brim with the essence tomorrow’s regrets, today. After a career spanning a full forty years, 2018 sees the insanely exciting release of the Primitive Calculators' third studio album to date, On Drugs. The Primitive Calculators are akin to the few people I’ve ever truly loved: they seem completely nonplussed with my affections and that only drives me towards my slow descent into becoming a complete psychopath, eventually driving myself down a deep, dark hole of self-loathing and bitter defeat.
Luckily for yours truly On Drugs, the follow-up to the aptly titled, The World Is Fucked, is full of feel good, pick-me-up tracks including the nine minute title track and epic opener, On Drugs. There's also the pulsating and screeching maelstrom that is, I’m Fucked, which includes a very unexpected rap verse from newest addition and member of the adorably named backing band, the Pocket Calculators, O-G-O. Then feast on the completely heartbreaking slow-burn melancholia of I Wish You Were Dead and of course my personal theme song, Old & Stupid, which features the life-affirming chorus, "Old enough to know better / Stupid enough to not give a fuck" most assuredly words of great wisdom that we can all reflect on as we age gracefully.
If I had to dumb it down to a very basic level that someone such as myself could wrap their empty heads around, I would say that the Primitive Calculators sounds like the proto-punk, more self-aware and best version of Nine Inch Nails for struggling adults that never quite got their shit together. It’s music for human beings refusing the devilishly heartbreaking allure of the forty hour work grind, instead undertaking a lifetime of recreational drug abuse of occasional sadness- and that’s certainly no slight on either group. In fact a much younger version of myself used to cream over Trent Reznor’s leather pants and palpable angst- whilst the current version of myself leans more closely to the clang and the throb of the Primitive Calculators almost wall of noise, stemming from their vast array of synths and drum machines alongside shrieking guitar play that never fails to command my utmost attention.
While taking a shallow look at the Primitive Calculators one could focus on the seemingly outward negativity and disillusionment with the current climate of the world, but delve a little deeper and you’ll see that over the span of their career, the group have used their music to kick firmly against the pricks and helped focus some of our collective anger and utter bemusement into something fierce, motivating and bombastic whilst also channeling some very dark humour into a record that is inherently catchy, danceable and chock full of spunk. The music here is never muddied by the message and the end result is Primitive Calculators firing on absolutely all cylinders and producing the most captivating music of their curious career.
- Jay Edwards.