Review
– a Swerve compilation
CD on Swerve Records through Blah Blah Blah
Like an aural bull at a gate, Quincey McLean & the Smoothe Bastards rip
into the headphones as the introduction to a Swerve
compilation, in much the same way as they ripped straight into
the Big Backyard compilation on which I first heard them… and so the mood was
set for 45min of Australian new music as promised by the rep Swerve Records have built for themselves
and supported by this 14-track 7-artist compilation of the artists on their
roster as at March 1999.
With the player set on random, the next track
to jump out with the same severity was Television from
the Sugarhips with
the garage rock-cum-punk pop-alternative approach akin to The Early Hours (Kalgoorlie
Unearthed winners). The rest of the record moved, as you would expect from
any compilation with class and style, from one end of the alternative spectrum
to the other, including the Alternative Country of Kate
Stalker, the Tim
Curry-fronted Cruel
Sea-cum-Bad
Seeds Alternative Rock of Quincey’s Little By Little, the You
Am I Berlin Chair
stylings of Sugarhips on
their Caffeine Tour, and he who founded and
now heads the label, Rob Griffiths, in
front of The Little Murders and
their Andy Warhol Perspective very
much in the Paul
Kelly & the Coloured Girls style.
Swerve’s
reputation is to take those bands that would not normally be signed elsewhere
and make them their own – it is that eccentricity and business boldness that
has made this compilation such a success (in the ears of this writer at least)
and the herald of many big things to come from this Melbourne-based independent
label. Well done, Richard &
co!