Tuesday September 21, 2021
Swifty Goes To The Shop is about as unassuming a song title as you’re going to come across, mainly because the track is a hard rock record and also because it comes from a band whose creative preoccupations are informed by the less examined aspects of society, which in turn give them added weight and impetus.
Australia has a long-standing tradition of producing notable rock bands that are as singular and distinctive as the land in which they’re born—think AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, The Angels, Lobby Loyde and the Coloured Balls (for all you Melburnians out there)—bands whose sound incorporated the raw and unfiltered, and to a certain extent for some of them, utilized humor to help reinforce their skills and style. A relatively new band on the block of this highly esteemed classic Australian rock genre is Suburbiasuburbia.
The group has just released a new track, Swifty Goes To The Shop, a blues-rock trip that contains not only all the hallmarks of a gratifying rock record—the performances, the sonic pummelling—but also a sly sense of humour and wry sensibility. The Suburbiasuburbia story began four years ago. A newly formed writing duo morphed into a five-piece band, with Toowoomba a band personnel resource. Incorporating themes that derive straight from the suburbs, ‘where the roofs are all the same’, the band delivers a despatch from the great unwashed, a message from the land and sometimes a little self-deprecation.
With several singles and an album, Landfill, released since 2020, Swifty Goes To The Shop relies on the band’s fiery spirit and tongue in cheek approach to create a welcome musical deviation. As the band has said about the new single, ‘Swifty had been indoors for some time and needed a retail excursion to treat his weary mind—he didn’t care for beer—he wanted plant residue.
This story is about getting out of the house to buy happiness and freedom from constraint on a tight budget.’ The band, which comprises Tony Townsend (lead vocals), Alan ‘Kroc’ Lyon (harmonica and vocals), Rowie Riot (lead guitar), Noel Gardner (drums), Robbie ‘The Unit’ Dekker (rhythm guitar) and Robbie Jib (bass and vocals), creates a rollickingly menacing soundscape, part psychedelic slash garage rock, part classic power blues, a sonic mixture enhanced by a direct, playful narrative.
