Review by ALEC SMART 19/04/2021
The Chats, supported by Teenage Joans, performed at the University of Wollongong Unibar during their twice-rescheduled ACDC CD Tour, which sees them play 15 shows in limited-capacity venues to promote their most recent song ACDC CD.
The song, a tribute to one of their primary influences, Oz rock veterans AC/DC, was released in Nov 2020 as a digital download, although a limited edition 7” vinyl record included a cover of AC/DC’s Rocker on the flipside.
The Chats’ coronavirus-delayed ACDC CD Tour now ends as their next round of live gigs begin, the High Risk Behaviour Tour in May 2021. The HRB Tour was postponed a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and is in support of their debut album of the same name, which was released a year ago through Bargain Bin Records on 27 March 2020.
Teenage Joans are an Adelaide duo featuring teenagers Tahlia Borg (drums and vocals) and Cahli Blakers (guitar and vocals), both recently graduated from their respective high schools.
Main vocalist Cahli Blakers honed her talent as a solo performer before aligning with drummer Tahlia Borg. Formed in 2018, they caused a minor storm with their Nov 2019 debut song, By The Way, and their powerful live show earned them opening spots for major touring artists and appearances at Laneway and Day of Clarity music festivals in South Australia.
They went on to win the 2019 South Australian Live Act of the Year whilst their second single, Three Leaf Clover won Triple J Radio’s 2020 Unearthed High competition while Borg was still attending high school.
Musically, despite just being a duo without the traditional bass player that characterises most rock bands, their well-crafted songs, in an ‘Indie’-rock/grunge vein, deliver a lot of energy with edgy guitar, driving drums and low-high dual vocal harmonies.
On stage the band are engaging, inclusive, and occasionally pause and invite the audience to singalong to their catchy choruses. For example, their song Terrible had the audience singing “It’s terrible, but it’ll do, it’s terrible, but I’m not you!”
Lyrically, the songs centre around teenage angst, relationships, growing up, with some funny turns of phrase. Blakers, a self-confessed ‘outcast’, told City Mag in 2019 that when writing they’re often inspired by “typical teenage delinquent vibes.”
Their latest (Jan 2021) release, Something About Being Sixteen, which Blakers told Triple J is their the “most favourite song we’ve ever written”, is accompanied by a music video where a birthday party degenerates into a massive food fight.
The Chats’ March 2020 debut album, High Risk Behaviour, which they’re about to tour live, reached number 5 on the ARIA Albums Chart and also charted in Belgium and Scotland (peaking at #15 in the latter), despite the worldwide coronavirus pandemic preventing the band from playing concerts to promote it.
The release of the album was preceded by its five defining singles: Do What I Want, Pub Feed, Identity Theft, The Clap, and Dine N Dash, featuring their ironic, iconic, snappy punk ditties.
New Musical Express (NME) described it as the “perfect soundtrack to being bored, broke and optimistic.”
Universal Records, when signing the band in March 2019, described The Chats’ droll commentaries on urban life as: “perfect, three minute nuggets about everyday things that are so obvious, they can only be genius!”
Launching into their high-energy, no-frills set at the University of Wollongong, their music characterised by shouty vocals and minimalist, generally non-existent guitar solos, The Chats’ familiar tunes elicited a chorus of voices from the enthusiastic, boisterous student crowd. Most of the young audience would only have been exposed to the band via social media, thanks to the coronavirus limiting the band’s live shows over the previous year.
On stage ginger mullet-haired vocalist-bassist Eamon Sandwith sported a Cosmic Psychos T-shirt, the Melbourne trio who, like The Chats, are also renowned for sparse driving riffs and yobbo humour. (Cosmic Psychos, founded in 1982, are still performing with original vocalist-bassist Ross Knight).
The Chats’ new lad, Josh Hardy, guitarist-vocalist for fellow Sunshine Coast garage-rock band The Unknowns, has settled in well as axeman after the departure of guitarist Josh Price in Nov 2020.
Price was the second of the original founding quartet to depart The Chats, leaving vocalist-bassist Eamon Sandwith and drummer Matt Boggis from the four who met in music class at St. Theresa’s Catholic College in Noosa Heads, Queensland, in 2016.
The band derived their name from the slang expression, “that’s chat”, meaning “that’s shit/terrible!”
Josh Hardy’s other band, The Unknowns, which released their debut album Nothing Will Ever Stop in Nov 2020 via The Chats’ record label Bargain Bin Records, continue to play live with Hardy and opened for The Chats on several dates of this tour.
The Unknown’s bassist-vocalist Nathan Montgomery told NME in Oct 2020, “The Chats have always supported us, and it’s awesome we can put our music out through their label.”
The University of Wollongong crowd exchanged between-song banter with the band, calling out requests, and the dance floor seethed with churning bodies as the night progressed.
The band finished their main set on Better Than You, also the closer on their High Risk Behaviour album, but the audience had no intention of letting them leave the stage without an encore.
Behind an umbrella – an oddity in itself – Sandwith and Hardy pretended to discuss their options before Sandwith turned to the crowd and announced, “we’re in negotiations to play one more song. We’ve actually got two more, because we forgot to play one. Unfortunately, that will cost more on the ticket you purchased!”
The band then launched into their crowd favourite, Smoko, their Aug 2017 signature song about Aussie labourers’ traditional tea-and-cigarette rest.
Smoko became an international viral hit on YouTube thanks to its amusing film clip featuring a construction site and a beach life saver declining to rescue a drowning woman until he’s had his cigarette break.
Mid-song in Wollongong, a stage invader clambered up and danced around the microphone – which Sandwith indicated to the stage security to allow – joining in on the choruses before stage-diving and crowd-surfing atop a sea of hands.
The band ended the night on a raucous version of Good Pub Feed, the second single of their debut album, the video of which featured them riding a 3-seater tandem like TV comedy trio The Goodies, and playing pokies in a bar.
Beneath the band’s official YouTube clip of Good Pub Feed, some wag has commented: “Punk in the 70s: safety pins through your cheeks. Punk in 2019: white socks and sandals!”
View Alec Smart’s full gallery of images HERE