Reality Instructors: The Timeless Threat Of...

- The story of Reality Instructors is one of the most poignant you’ll come across. It’s centered on Dan Pash, a life-long musician and, if you talk to certain tastemakers, one of Australia’s most gifted guitarists; he’s also been inexorably going deaf. Thanks to a genetic condition his hearing has been in decline for his whole adult life, but it didn’t stop Dan from music-making in such well-regarded bands as Leader Cheetah. That said, it did make things increasingly difficult and after Cheetah disbanded he was nearly ready to give it all away. However, defying fate, in 2017 Pash grabbed his guitar again and with his partner Eve Lande on bass and drummer Nick Kennedy -as Dan’s hearing degenerated to a critical level- formed a new band called Reality Instructors, to give it one last go.

It really gives the notion of ‘urgent’ rock’n’roll a wholly different feel and certainly, Reality Instructors have wasted no time, putting out three records in just four years of existence. The latest of these, new EP The Timeless Threat Of… was recorded in circumstances that sound very trying indeed, with Dan operating with about three percent of his former hearing. It made me ask -because I have to admit I didn’t know- about solutions like hearing aids. Since these final recordings Dan has indeed undergone surgery for cochlear implants but, while they’re perfectly serviceable for understanding speech, their capacity to relate the nuance of timbre and pitch is much less certain. This is the reason why he waited so long to get the operation, even suffering significant impediments in his daily life, just so he could continue to hear music, like he used to.

Reality Instructors would have every excuse to be one of the grimmest sounding bands in existence, an outlet for truly distressing emotion. At the very least you have to give them credit for extraordinary restraint, because their back-catalogue and The Timeless Threat Of… doesn’t sound that way at all. I mean it’s substantially more furious than the Neil Young-ish indie-country of Leader Cheetah, splitting the difference between a variety of stylishly and more or less obscure post-punk (like Wipers, Mission Of Burma, Marine Girls) and powerpop influences (in The Nerves, The Jam and Rocket From The Crypt side-project The Sultans) you end up with something roaring, dark and sweet.

Honestly? All those influences are on the money, but if you think about what that actually adds up to, especially on the new record, Reality Instructors could be a slightly more thunderous New Pornographers, The Clouds or even Hoodoo Gurus. Which is by no means a criticism, The Timeless Threat Of… is grown-up indie-pop-rock that makes me remember why I ever liked the stuff in the first place.

The lyrics tend to be circumspect, a little oblique, but, understandably cluster around feelings of isolation, rejection and a growing dissatisfaction with the vanilla perception of reality. Occasionally it busts through into a manic bounce, a celebration of survival and a new way of being, like on closer Negative Magic: strangely Dan Pash manages to make lyrics like “when did our fate get set in stone / we’ve turned this corner twenty times before / can’t read your face anymore” sound like a new beginning. It could be telling however, that the best song here is a gothic masterpiece, Cinema Engines, revelling in an increasing disconnection. Pash drones “While I wait, I’m disappearing to the other side / There’s no place I see your faces, that I’m at home in / Nothing that’s mine.” The ominous chorus intones “If I close my eyes, wake me up when you hear it coming / If I close my eyes, wake me up when the hits start coming”, like isolation is only the harbinger for something darker. The all-enveloping guitar power is married to a haunting synth and the intertwining vocals of Pash and Lande come together more effectively than anywhere else.

It’s difficult to know how to circumscribe this record. I think that’s because it’s difficult to know what the future holds for Dan and those around him; whether music is even a possibility for him after his surgery and what his journey will be like. His experience, even to this point, has been more than anyone would want to deal with. Trying not to sound trite, I suppose I’d note the old truism about the connection between the experience of personal adversity and the power of musical expression. The Timeless Threat Of… is a record well worth your time.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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