Review: The Chats – GET FUCKED


The Chats GET FUCKED




The Chats go up yet another gear on their second studio album.

Whilst lockdown prompted many artists to think hard about why they did what they did, The Chats – left unable to tour their rollicking debut album High Risk Behaviour – had a more fatalist approach.

According to their bass/singer Eamon Sandwith, the extended downtime was viewed as more of a blessing than a curse: ‘We weren’t too worried about, like, ‘Oh, what are we going to do?’ It was actually great to have that year or so to step back and be like, ‘Alright, what’s our next move?’.

Not that the period was completely without upheaval, as founding guitarist Pricey left to be replaced by Josh Hardy, whom Sandwith and drummer Matt Boggis had often seen gigging in their hometown of Sunny Coast. After that, all three of them then relocated to the more metropolitan climes of Brisbane.

Anyone expecting the change of scenery to mean greater sophistication should however pay heed to the title of their new record. Indeed, the material on GET FUCKED was largely conceived during sessions in a roughneck town called Southport, with the thirty-four second thrash of Southport Superman about a local junkie trying to score like an Olympic sprinter. And much of The Chats appeal remains in that most of their songs double as really good bar anecdotes.

Musically though they still has the quality of raw meat, but aside from The Price Of Smokes – a laugh out loud personal recollection of life dealing with disgruntled smokers from behind a supermarket cig counter – the tempo this time round has if anything shifted upwards.

In a time where anybody has access to forty-five years of punk’s history at their fingertips, it shouldn’t be a surprise though that three twenty-somethings are also able to bullseye so many of its (often accidental) visionaries.

Accordingly, GET FUCKED contains nods to some of punk’s deep lying roots, from the likes of Out On The Street (Black Flag), the pogo-tastic Boggo Breakout (Stiff Little Fingers) and the cartoon mayhem of I’ve Been Drunk In Every Pub In Brisbane (The Damned).

To achieve the latter, Sandwith reckons you’d have to stop by bars numbering in the high hundreds, a socio-cultural benefit of living in the city’s extreme temperatures which make it acceptable to start drinking earlier than anywhere else.



The band’s old home wasn’t always quite so sweet however, Emperor Of The Beach riffing snarkily on Gold Coast’s macho surfer Nazis as told from their perspective, ‘People laugh at me when I’m not trying to be funny’, whilst back in sunny Southport the buzzsaw scree of Paid Late deals with a trashed ATM and some broken bones.

As incendiary and piss taking as it all is, Sandwith remains far more self-aware than many bystanders would expect, being happy enough to talk about himself openly on Panic Attack, which deals up close with the physical symptoms, but played at a seizure inducing speed.

His message for those who might dismiss The Chats as loutish Aussie caricatures is simply: ‘I don’t see or hear heaps of that energy, or that fun loving music any more around the place. I feel like people need to not take themselves and their art so seriously, and just kind of have fun with it.’

Like the band themselves, he knows that you can take GET FUCKED at face value or allow it to work away until each of these songs has, if not a deeper meaning, then at least some loveable truth.

And with it, The Chats’ plan to take over the world by not having a plan to do it has moved one step nearer to reality.


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