Our editor’s pick of the albums reviewed on these pages during the past seven days is The Chats‘ High Risk Behaviour – revisit the review and check out the album via Spotify!
“There is a school of thought which says that, regardless that the culture and language might change, the dry powder which ignited to make punk rock exists in anyone with a certain set of values.”
“This is probably why it remains one of the most popular movements around the world – you can see a punk band anywhere from Tierra Del Fuego to Tromso – and also how it can thrive even under the baking sun of Queensland, Australia, the oven like constituency which has thrown up a mightily uncouth trio in The Chats.”
“Having got together whilst still at school, guitarist Josh Price, bassist Eamonn Sandwidth and drummer Matt Boggis loved AC/DC and wrote songs about what they knew, from boredom to bouncers, all served up in a primal two-chord stew of youthful hubris. Famously, their break came when the self-produced video for Smoko – immortalising the native term for a cigarette break – earned them the patronage of Dave Grohl and Josh Homme; it’s hard to know how much they understood of its succession of pisstakes and Antipodean in-jokes, but regardless it earned the then teenagers a global reputation they’re now pleased to live down to.”