THE DUKE LISTENS TO
TINNITUS
BY THE BACKYARD BABIES
TINNITUS
BY THE BACKYARD BABIES
There comes a time in a man’s afternoon, when what has to happen,
is that a hefty kick upside the face needs to be administered.
What the fuck are you doing?, this kick might ask. Get the fuck
out that bed, fling some hair-molesting ointment of some sort over
your head, and get the fuck into the real world once more, you
snivelling son of a bitch. What’s this shit I hear crawling from
out the speakers? What’s all this acoustic guitar and general
melancholy? I’ll give you something to bitch about, is what,
bitch, by which I mean I’ll beat your eyes out your damn head.
Sometimes, y’see, a presiding aura of despair hovers around a
fella’s being, and maybe he doesn’t even notice, on account of it
seems to be hanging over everyone else right now, too. Everyone
wants to be miserable these days, wants to think a whole lot,
also. I mean come the fuck on, according to what I’ve picked up
from here and there when I wasn’t really paying attention, even
that Bright Eyes song by Art Garfunkle has been, like, numbers one
and two on the American chart.
Songs about rabbits dying aren’t gonna get nothing done.
So what happened was The Duke was listening to something mournful
and contemplative. Maybe it was one of those Ryan Adams discs,
maybe it was something by young Conner Oberst, maybe even a song
about Johnny Cash shot some folks and feels guilty as hell about
it all. Perhaps it was even The Duke’s Very Own Records Of Moaning
Despair. Whatever it was, it was great, but probably not going
very far with regards making The Duke feel like the sassiest
barrel of sass ever sassed upon creation.
To this end, a record appears in my midst, a record by the name of
Tinnitus by The Backyard Babies. If you thought the Backyard
Babies were gonna sing about “My baby done upped and left, and now
what happens is / Despair, other stuff / Not very pleasant / Not
at all” then you need to go back and read Socrates musings on the
act in question.
To wit;
“Backyard Babies, man. They rock like the nuts of fuck, is what.”
– Socrates, Back In The Day
I gotta agree with Socrates. Backyard Babies rock like the nuts of
fuck. I don’t know what the other Greeks might have said about it
all, but probably they agreed with Socrates. Who the hell would
think of contradicting the old bastard?
What Tinnitus concerns itself with, is being one of your
compilation type deals. It offers four tracks a piece from the
band’s last three records, Total 13, Making Enemies Is Good and
Stockholm Syndrome. Truth be told, it’s pretty much fantastic.
Now, you may or may not be aware of The Duke’s love of British pop-
metal wonders The Wildhearts. You may even have read The Duke’s
Interview With The Frontman, Ginger. This right here is important,
on account of The Backyard Babies are obviously big fans too. I’m
gonna go ahead and assume they ain’t no strangers to Earth Versus
The Wildhearts or Fishing For Luckies.
The opening track, Brand New Hate, could have been lifted straight
off of any of The Wildhearts pre-Endless Nameless albums.
Thankfully, The Wildhearts are amazing, and if they’re gonna
borrow some time-changes and a couple chords here and there from
anyone, at least The Backyard Babies knew where to look.
What it all amounts to, is that this is your kinda balls-out, fuck
you Rock N Roll like what you used to get from your Hanoi Rocks or
your Motley Crues, except, thank God, this is nowhere near as
embarrassing as that kinda shit. It’s the kinda stuff you hear
plastered all over Appetite For Destruction; sleazy, narcotic-
laced gutter-rock.
The difference is that, whereas Poison or whoever it was sang
about “Take me to the Paradise Cities” spent their time wandering
around the strip-clubs and crack-dens of LA, The Backyard Babies
grew up amidst the probably much colder strip-clubs and crack-dens
of Sweden. Obviously, non-Swedish speakers could have problems
with the lyrics and so on, but since they’re sung in English, you
should be ok. Maybe you might wanna pick up one of those CD-ROM
things about Learn Swedish In 20 Minutes Or Possibly Four Weeks.
If I didn’t tell you, though, chances are you wouldn’t know that
The Backyard Babies are from anywhere other than Sunset Strip,
concoted in a test-tube filled with heroin, whiskey, power-chords
and fuck-words.
And amazingly, this doesn’t sound dated in the slightest. It
sounds raw, immediate, a slap upside the teeth, is what.
Nor does it sound all nostalgic like those Darkness cats. Probably
it’ll bring back memories of make-up and greasy hair and
cigarettes perpetually dangling from bottom lips, but it has NOW,
MOTHERFUCKER stamped all over it.
The hit-rate on Tinnitus is alarmingly high throughout. Rarely has
a fella got time for to drift off into some kind of violet
dreamworld awash with despondency and misery. You ain’t got a
second to catch your breath, man. The mile-high riffs and the
sleaze and the wasted glamour just keep piling on top of one
another.
And if you can’t get your head around the notion of a record that
don’t talk about “my baby, oh, she left, and look at this here
shit / I’m a puddle of empty puddles” then the Kiss-inspired Minus
Celsius might break you in fairly easy, with its yacking about;
“You sure got your hooks in,
It’s freezing, I’m so cold”
To be honest, though, Minus Celsius is one of the weaker tracks
herein. For The Duke’s money, although said track doesn’t for a
second come anywhere close to “sensitive”, it’s the punk abandon
of shit like A Song For The Outcast that gets a man’s blood
pumping. All that swagger, man, all those lyrics about “On the
road to a strict perfection / Only the beauty live to tell / This
is the source of all the infections / Jaded, but I won’t burn out
with you.” Ridiculous, perhaps, but somehow rather profound, and
impossible to ignore when spat in such uproarious, anthemic
fashion from Nick Borg’s cracked and made-up face.
Made Me Madman is even better, a middle finger thrust into the
teeth of The Man, with emphasis on the corner of The Man that
deals with the Record Companies and so on. “I might make a man mad
/ Cause you made me a mad man!” Again, it shouldn’t sound so
thrilling, but these sentiments somehow become the most important
sentiments you’ve heard expressed all week.
Friends, though, I’m gonna wager, is the most glorious of all the
glories contained herein. Riding along on a riff plucked straight
from out of Keith Richards' pocket, back when he still wrote ones
worth stealing, it’s probably the most infectious 2 minutes 49
seconds I been exposed to for ages. It starts with one of the
great “Son Of A Bitch” snarls in Rock N Roll, up there with the
one at the start of, I think, Marie’s The Name (His Latest Flame)
by Elvis Costello or whoever.
“I know a man, back in Japan,
Bakyard Babies is his favourite band”
I don’t know anyone from Japan, much less anyone so in love with
The Backyard Babies, but holy shit, man, you convinced me, is the
truth of the case. Maybe Takashi Miike digs the fuck out of them.
I don’t know. It even has the nuts to steal a line from Paul
McCartney;
“Look at all these lonely people”, they suggest, before noting,
“They’re born to lose, but they cannot die.”
That right there is pretty much the presiding sentiment running
throughout Tinnitus. It’s a series of rallying, fist in the air,
or in a face, anthems for folks standing Twiggy-legged outside
taverns and brothels, folks who just don’t give a fuck, unless
it's about the punk mentality and the roaring disdain. You can
count the fucks they give, man, and you’ll find yourself
struggling to get past one, and that one’s only the fuck they give
about not giving any fucks in the slightest.
It’s wonderful, and as a primer for to go exploring a little
deeper, this record is pretty impeccable. Maybe you’ll wanna
download Bombed (Out Of My Mind) as well, but this shit’ll keep
you going for months, man.
Tinnitus is released in the US on April 5th by Liquor And Poker,
and you can even grab it in a funky digipack type get-up with a
free 16 track label sampler.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
is that a hefty kick upside the face needs to be administered.
What the fuck are you doing?, this kick might ask. Get the fuck
out that bed, fling some hair-molesting ointment of some sort over
your head, and get the fuck into the real world once more, you
snivelling son of a bitch. What’s this shit I hear crawling from
out the speakers? What’s all this acoustic guitar and general
melancholy? I’ll give you something to bitch about, is what,
bitch, by which I mean I’ll beat your eyes out your damn head.
Sometimes, y’see, a presiding aura of despair hovers around a
fella’s being, and maybe he doesn’t even notice, on account of it
seems to be hanging over everyone else right now, too. Everyone
wants to be miserable these days, wants to think a whole lot,
also. I mean come the fuck on, according to what I’ve picked up
from here and there when I wasn’t really paying attention, even
that Bright Eyes song by Art Garfunkle has been, like, numbers one
and two on the American chart.
Songs about rabbits dying aren’t gonna get nothing done.
So what happened was The Duke was listening to something mournful
and contemplative. Maybe it was one of those Ryan Adams discs,
maybe it was something by young Conner Oberst, maybe even a song
about Johnny Cash shot some folks and feels guilty as hell about
it all. Perhaps it was even The Duke’s Very Own Records Of Moaning
Despair. Whatever it was, it was great, but probably not going
very far with regards making The Duke feel like the sassiest
barrel of sass ever sassed upon creation.
To this end, a record appears in my midst, a record by the name of
Tinnitus by The Backyard Babies. If you thought the Backyard
Babies were gonna sing about “My baby done upped and left, and now
what happens is / Despair, other stuff / Not very pleasant / Not
at all” then you need to go back and read Socrates musings on the
act in question.
To wit;
“Backyard Babies, man. They rock like the nuts of fuck, is what.”
– Socrates, Back In The Day
I gotta agree with Socrates. Backyard Babies rock like the nuts of
fuck. I don’t know what the other Greeks might have said about it
all, but probably they agreed with Socrates. Who the hell would
think of contradicting the old bastard?
What Tinnitus concerns itself with, is being one of your
compilation type deals. It offers four tracks a piece from the
band’s last three records, Total 13, Making Enemies Is Good and
Stockholm Syndrome. Truth be told, it’s pretty much fantastic.
Now, you may or may not be aware of The Duke’s love of British pop-
metal wonders The Wildhearts. You may even have read The Duke’s
Interview With The Frontman, Ginger. This right here is important,
on account of The Backyard Babies are obviously big fans too. I’m
gonna go ahead and assume they ain’t no strangers to Earth Versus
The Wildhearts or Fishing For Luckies.
The opening track, Brand New Hate, could have been lifted straight
off of any of The Wildhearts pre-Endless Nameless albums.
Thankfully, The Wildhearts are amazing, and if they’re gonna
borrow some time-changes and a couple chords here and there from
anyone, at least The Backyard Babies knew where to look.
What it all amounts to, is that this is your kinda balls-out, fuck
you Rock N Roll like what you used to get from your Hanoi Rocks or
your Motley Crues, except, thank God, this is nowhere near as
embarrassing as that kinda shit. It’s the kinda stuff you hear
plastered all over Appetite For Destruction; sleazy, narcotic-
laced gutter-rock.
The difference is that, whereas Poison or whoever it was sang
about “Take me to the Paradise Cities” spent their time wandering
around the strip-clubs and crack-dens of LA, The Backyard Babies
grew up amidst the probably much colder strip-clubs and crack-dens
of Sweden. Obviously, non-Swedish speakers could have problems
with the lyrics and so on, but since they’re sung in English, you
should be ok. Maybe you might wanna pick up one of those CD-ROM
things about Learn Swedish In 20 Minutes Or Possibly Four Weeks.
If I didn’t tell you, though, chances are you wouldn’t know that
The Backyard Babies are from anywhere other than Sunset Strip,
concoted in a test-tube filled with heroin, whiskey, power-chords
and fuck-words.
And amazingly, this doesn’t sound dated in the slightest. It
sounds raw, immediate, a slap upside the teeth, is what.
Nor does it sound all nostalgic like those Darkness cats. Probably
it’ll bring back memories of make-up and greasy hair and
cigarettes perpetually dangling from bottom lips, but it has NOW,
MOTHERFUCKER stamped all over it.
The hit-rate on Tinnitus is alarmingly high throughout. Rarely has
a fella got time for to drift off into some kind of violet
dreamworld awash with despondency and misery. You ain’t got a
second to catch your breath, man. The mile-high riffs and the
sleaze and the wasted glamour just keep piling on top of one
another.
And if you can’t get your head around the notion of a record that
don’t talk about “my baby, oh, she left, and look at this here
shit / I’m a puddle of empty puddles” then the Kiss-inspired Minus
Celsius might break you in fairly easy, with its yacking about;
“You sure got your hooks in,
It’s freezing, I’m so cold”
To be honest, though, Minus Celsius is one of the weaker tracks
herein. For The Duke’s money, although said track doesn’t for a
second come anywhere close to “sensitive”, it’s the punk abandon
of shit like A Song For The Outcast that gets a man’s blood
pumping. All that swagger, man, all those lyrics about “On the
road to a strict perfection / Only the beauty live to tell / This
is the source of all the infections / Jaded, but I won’t burn out
with you.” Ridiculous, perhaps, but somehow rather profound, and
impossible to ignore when spat in such uproarious, anthemic
fashion from Nick Borg’s cracked and made-up face.
Made Me Madman is even better, a middle finger thrust into the
teeth of The Man, with emphasis on the corner of The Man that
deals with the Record Companies and so on. “I might make a man mad
/ Cause you made me a mad man!” Again, it shouldn’t sound so
thrilling, but these sentiments somehow become the most important
sentiments you’ve heard expressed all week.
Friends, though, I’m gonna wager, is the most glorious of all the
glories contained herein. Riding along on a riff plucked straight
from out of Keith Richards' pocket, back when he still wrote ones
worth stealing, it’s probably the most infectious 2 minutes 49
seconds I been exposed to for ages. It starts with one of the
great “Son Of A Bitch” snarls in Rock N Roll, up there with the
one at the start of, I think, Marie’s The Name (His Latest Flame)
by Elvis Costello or whoever.
“I know a man, back in Japan,
Bakyard Babies is his favourite band”
I don’t know anyone from Japan, much less anyone so in love with
The Backyard Babies, but holy shit, man, you convinced me, is the
truth of the case. Maybe Takashi Miike digs the fuck out of them.
I don’t know. It even has the nuts to steal a line from Paul
McCartney;
“Look at all these lonely people”, they suggest, before noting,
“They’re born to lose, but they cannot die.”
That right there is pretty much the presiding sentiment running
throughout Tinnitus. It’s a series of rallying, fist in the air,
or in a face, anthems for folks standing Twiggy-legged outside
taverns and brothels, folks who just don’t give a fuck, unless
it's about the punk mentality and the roaring disdain. You can
count the fucks they give, man, and you’ll find yourself
struggling to get past one, and that one’s only the fuck they give
about not giving any fucks in the slightest.
It’s wonderful, and as a primer for to go exploring a little
deeper, this record is pretty impeccable. Maybe you’ll wanna
download Bombed (Out Of My Mind) as well, but this shit’ll keep
you going for months, man.
Tinnitus is released in the US on April 5th by Liquor And Poker,
and you can even grab it in a funky digipack type get-up with a
free 16 track label sampler.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
