AS PERSONAL AS GENITAL WARTS

April 7, 2024

RATSALAD.

RATSALAD
BENT TREES & SWANNY DEEZ

In February this year I reviewed the new Kill Devil Hills album, MATANGO!, concluding by wondering out loud whether any other Western Australian band would be capable of picking up where KDH had left off. Turns out I didn’t have to wait long at all, because just last week Geraldton’s RATSALAD. (fuck, that’s going to be an annoying band name to keep on top of) spewed forth their debut album, Bent Trees & Swanny Deez and lo! it was good.

RATSALAD.’s debut album is chock full of songs that are as personal as genital warts and as universal as solving world hunger…

Bent Trees & Swanny Deez ticks all the boxes. It could only have been made in Western Australia but has all the swagger and puppy dog charm that gives it worldwide appeal. It sounds like a lot of other things — think 90s/00s punk and the current iteration of female-fronted Aussie pub rock — but it has a sound all of its own; so, lineage without slavish copycatting. It’s galvanising, a call to arms with that 21^st Century sleight of hand that’s all about spitting bile while also creating community. In my day, we just wanted to burn things down. RATSALAD. want to build them up. I’m open to that, but immolation has been on my mind a fair bit lately.

I spoke to Erica, Ken and Jaz, who are RATSALAD., over the phone from their Geraldton bunker at the northern end of what they call the ‘Hangover Highway’. I have to be honest, I loved chatting to the three of them, but they literally had nothing of interest to say. They love hanging out together. They love making music, They love playing for their fans. They’re hard working, humble and committed to their music. They’re willing to go the distance. And … blah!

I mean no disrespect, but I’ve spent so many years trying to stitch together the words of startup/upstart bands and turn them into something interesting that I’m reluctant to do it these days. Usually having no media persona means the band/artist are kind of good (sometimes they’re not), but that’s about it. As I near the end of my run on this monotonous treadmill we call life, I increasingly spend my time doing things that please only me and happily salute my detractors with a strident, ‘fuck you’. Helping bands with their narrative is not anywhere near the top of my to do list.

Except, RATSALAD. — even with that fucking annoying full-stop — are a genuinely great band. They’ve been playing transcendent, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck, life enhancing, crowd-pulling gigs for a good few years now. Live on stage, RATSALAD. are energy creators, to the extent that they could solve Australia’s impending power shortage without the need for Potatohead Dutton’s nuclear furphy. No one, not even me, can attend a RATSALAD. gig without coming out glowing — with sweat and with that inner sense of life having meaning again.

Debut album, Bent Trees & Swanny Deez confirms RATSALAD.’s status and will propel them into the pantheon of overnight sensations, with those that have never seen them before claiming in years to come that they too were at the Corner Gallery the night RATSALAD. supported Indigo Blaze and just about blew them off the stage.

RATSALAD.’s debut album is chock full of songs that are as personal as genital warts and as universal as solving world hunger, but without all the hand-wringing earnestness that makes organisations like the United Nations such massive failures. The tracks on Bent Trees & Swanny Deez are old school punk delivered with the sort of screamo vocals that make me worry about longevity. But it’s that immediacy and fuck-the-future attitude that is a big part of RATSALAD.’s thing. They hold nothing back, and that’s why this is a band the whole world should fall in love with, because, while they still have some craft to learn, they genuinely give everything that they are to their music.

Gotta love that.