Something In The Water

On Kangaroo Rock & The Impact Of The Australian Underground Sound Around The World

There’s a strange kind of mutual attraction between a certain kind of ‘underground’ Australian music and discerning European music lovers.

Distance, desperation and drive have combined to create a unique troupe of monstrously talented, unorthodox Australian show folk, poets, wordsmiths, musical freaks and pioneers, twisting remarkable stories, personal, imagined or historical, into song, delivered with a spine tingling intensity.

Australian artists are known for writing songs that are clever, funny, beautiful, raw and bleak, where dry humour and cutting wit collide with darkly romantic lyricism and brutalist poetry that pulls no punches, and for performing incendiary, thrillingly unpredictable shows, sometimes with a seeming utter disdain for or disinterest in their audience. The making of the music is what matters, not the selling of it.

The French call it ‘kangaroo rock’ and can’t get enough of it. A one way channel has opened for Australian artists to tour Europe – although sadly the audience numbers in Australia do not exist to really support reciprocation.

There are European record labels and booking agents with rosters that specialise in those Australian artists united by a particular feel, approach or independent spirit, some well-established legends, others with a passionate niche following; Kim Salmon, Beasts of Bourbon, Ed Kuepper, Mick Harvey, Penny Ikinger, The Scientists, Dirty Three, The Wreckery, Hugo Race, The Holy Soul, Kill Devil Hills, Six Ft Hick, Gentle Ben and His Shimmering Hands and Cash Savage, to name a few. Louis Tillet, Ron Peno, The Dubrovniks and The Drones were also beloved in this universe.

Penny Ikinger explains ‘Australian rock has a rawness, authenticity and lack of pretension that I think the Europeans are drawn towards. We have our own sound that is uniquely ours. It throws a fresh perspective on the rock'n'roll genre and is not just a regurgitation of what has gone before.’

Boris Sujdovic (The Scientists, Beasts of Bourbon, The Dubrovniks) credits German label Normal Records with championing a lot of underground Australian music in the 80s and 90s. The Dubrovniks were headlining festivals over Faith No More in Europe and returning to Australia to play to under thirty people at the General Bourke Hotel in Parramatta. In an Australian Rock Show interview Boris said “I’ve got a more philosophical view of life. I didn’t believe that because we weren’t as successful over here as we were in Europe that was necessarily anybody’s fault… some of those shows in Europe on that first tour we did … were firing on eight cylinders, we were really on fire you know, that’s probably what gave us our longevity there”.

Kim Salmon and his band The Scientists, internationally recognised inventors of the grunge movement and their own wild sound, have been touring Europe and the US regularly since the 80s. Biographer and bandmate Douglas Galbraith recounts a solo Salmon Euro tour, during which Kim turned sixty: ‘A dozen shows in as many days through Switzerland, Germany and France have Kim invigorated…each show is scorching, and Kim Salmon like a dervish…the audiences are euphoric and they stand up close, circling the stage and shouting like they’re watching an illegal cock fight…just twenty four hours later, Kim is back teaching guitar at JMC Academy in South Melbourne’. (‘Nine Parts Water, One Part Sand: Kim Salmon and the Formula for Grunge’ Melbourne Books 2018).

That there’s some reciprocal inspirational energy transference going on between Australian rock’n’roll practitioners and their Euro champions is not in question.

We grow in light, and their desire to see us shine and explode in blossom becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Feed them and they will come, or however that saying goes.

The general way it often seems to work in Australia is that the full glow and glory of our homegrown artists is only celebrated when another country recognises it first. The cultural cringe has always been in heavy action here.

JP Shilo reflects “It's funny to see the interest reflected back on oneself, as if there must be something in the water or something… Can't help wondering if there is some deeper genetic respect for Aussie allies from the wars that run through our bloodlines with the Frenchies also, that our current generations don’t necessarily fathom/comprehend...” He further cites the appropriations in language etymologies such as ‘bonza’ coming from ‘bon soir’ and ‘bottle of plonk’ coming from ‘vin blanc’ and says ‘I reckon there's a lot more under the surface of why the Aussies n Frogs get along’.

Gary Gauthier created French agency Hot Pants Touring in 2016 ‘to put Australian rock bands in the spotlight. He tells me ‘The European Scientists’ tour in 2018 was our first solid tour: 1 month, 10 countries, 17 shows and 14000km – all driving all across Europe! We recently ended the Rowland S. Howard tribute tour in Europe. Collaborating on this project was a honor, and seeing how much the audiences enjoyed the shows was the best reward to support keeping going on this way’.

Parisian musician Dimi Dero has been not only an incredibly important unofficial conduit for helping Aussie bands book shows, but has tour managed, played drums and put together bands to back many Australian artists touring solo, as well as producing a tribute album to Rowland S Howard with many legendary Australian artists involved, and performing covers of Australian songs he loves.

Bang Records is a Spanish independent record label from the Basque Country that has been organising tours and releasing Australian underground rock’n’roll, beginning with The Drones, in exquisitely packaged collector’s edition vinyl since 1997, as has Seb Blanchais’ French label Beast Records. Ludovic Lorre from Binic Folks Blues Festival hosts a revolving army of Australia’s finest exports.

These are the dream team for underground Aussie bands keen to escape and enjoy European hospitality, even if only for a short while.

Radio Birdman and The Saints led the post punk or whatever-you-want-to-call-it vision of splitting the oppressive, cultural wasteland of Australia in search of a more stimulating and sophisticated audience overseas.

Over forty years ago, the Birthday Party took their well-documented plunge towards that foreign lure of England’s golden shores because as Rowland S. Howard explains in the Autoluminescent documentary, ‘We had this utterly demented idea that people on the other side of the world had superior taste than we had here’.

The Moodists (with

Dave Graney

who writes

Players Please

here) weren’t far behind. Despite captivating highly respected tastemakers like John Peel, they all discovered the hard way that the island mentality of the English was vastly more depressing and disappointing than expected.

In spite of their struggles, they were making an impact.

English underground writer/film curator

Jack Sargeant

(who really should be writing here on Substack!) recalls:

In 1982 I was 14. I was really aware that punk had fractured into specific scenes - you had the anarcho punks like Crass, oi! which was just awful, and the early strains of goth - but none of it really spoke to me. I didn’t feel these were my world. Hearing the Birthday Party - especially the Bad Seed EP - was just revelatory. Pretty soon afterwards I heard the Scientists, the Moodists... and these bands didn’t seem to be similar, they didn’t seem to be a scene, but all seemed to be reaching elsewhere, or drawing on things that were unfamiliar to me. Maybe it’s the sense of space, the fact these bands gestated in their own world. They seemed unique.

Eventually, the Moodists headed back to Australia and the Birthday Party relocated to Berlin where Nick Cave states they were ‘received with open arms, into this community that … on some level reminded us of Melbourne’. Oliver Shutz from Die Haut remembers that their appearance “almost changed everything in the scene, clothes, how to behave, and talk, walk and look like …”.

That influence still runs deep, not only on the European underground rock’n’roll aesthetic, but also on the next wave of Australian artists who were drawn to Berlin en masse in search of this mythical place where they could live cheaply, flourish and thrive and maybe even be respected as artists, rather than being seen as little more than latte-drinking-dole-bludging-weirdo-wankers like they were at home.

The French, Greeks, Spaniards and Germans in particular also seem to have taken on the slight contempt that Melbournians feel towards the supposedly more shallow Sydneysiders to heart, and lovingly call this dark, literate vein of Australian music ‘The Melbourne sound’.

When I toured there, despite confessing I was from Sydney, I was told I had ‘the Melbourne sound’ which I certainly felt honoured to be included in, even after the revelation in a conversation that this sound bizarrely encompassed a lineage that included both the Beasts of Bourbon and INXS. Somehow they can hear a similarity that connects us all that we can’t hear ourselves. It could just be the accent. Or maybe there’s something of the landscape within in our sound.

In Eric Dennis’ 2012 Spectrum Culture interview, renowned photographer Bleddyn Butcher points out ‘The Triffids’ unexpected popularity in Scandinavia and the Low Countries, the European Lowlands, rather suggests that their appeal does not even depend on having English as a mother tongue … Music is the lingua franca, the dissolver of prejudice’.

‘Music is the lingua franca, the dissolver of prejudice’. (Bleddyn Butcher)

Indeed language is no barrier to a fascination with lyrics.

Mick Harvey was always intrigued by French icon Serge Gainsbourg’s extraordinary body of work and has to date produced four albums of English translations of his songs, over more than twenty years, partly because he wanted to ‘find out myself’ what the lyrics were actually about. On an ABC ‘The Music Show’ radio interview with Andrew Ford, he revealed ‘I began with the songs that attracted me from a lyrical point of view’. There’s no doubt that somewhat perverse Gainsbourg song titles such as ‘Requiem For A Cunt’, ‘Lemon Incest’ and ‘The Barrel Of My 45’ have an almost Australian post punk ring to them.

For all the down to earth Aussie lack of pretension, we are a remarkably cultured lot, who might well be found bonding over a love for left field literature by European outsider writers like Rimbaud, Appolinaire, Jarry and Baudelaire. Revolutionaries of song like Brel (notably performed in English by Scott Walker, Nina Simone and David Bowie) and Gainsbourg are shared cultural touchstones that link our artists and their European fans, alongside Southern Gothic authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crewes.

Connoisseurs of rock worldwide worship our purveyors of rock’n’roll. There is truly nothing quite like them anywhere else in the world.

The IDGAF Aussie ‘larrikin’ persona - currently spectacularly personified by Tropical Fuck Storm and Amyl & The Sniffers - has merged with a noir-ish air of bohemian Euro refinement to produce a heart stopping assortment of dangerously compelling Oz rock legends, pirates, dandies, cowboys and heroines, (overwhelmingly male but with singular exceptions) always erudite, cool, stylish - whether suit clad, toothless or inelegantly wasted - slightly intimidating, swearing with abandon, tough as nails but sensitive and sweet of soul.

Conrad Standish, who has a long history of touring Europe with his various bands, recalls playing in Bosnia for the first time in the late 90’s with The Devastations, who were thrilled to be getting some radio play in Europe, and were completely gobsmacked to discover the audience knew all of their songs and were singing along. They struggled to cover costs touring from Melbourne to Sydney at the time. “I guess it’s just fetishism in a way” he says. “Like there’s record nerds here who know everything about jangly UK music from 81-86”.

Six Ft Hick have been described as ‘an indistinguishable pulverising barrage of screams, sweat, spit and blood flowing over a fierce, raw pulsing din’. They have successfully toured Europe multiple times, but the press accompanying the documentary of their low budget musical Euro adventures clarifies that ‘their mild-mannered alter egos spend every waking moment maintaining day jobs and living normal lives, and amassing resources until they may re-awaken that beast’.

Its this ‘humble and true’ quality, as Gary from Hot Pants puts it, that you find in most Australian artists, basically a very genuine and un-American desire not to be up yourself. It translates well.

Revered songwriter Robert Forster - a self described ‘honest worker’ - sells out shows across Europe constantly, his reputation initiated via the hard yards the Go Betweens put in the 80s.

The Axeman's Jazz, the debut album by the legendary Beasts of Bourbon, was recorded in eight hours for $100 by Tony Cohen and sold over 30,000 copies in Europe on its release.

They have toured there ever since in a range of formations to rabid fans in the darkest corners of Europe.

I opened for them in Nimes where they performed a wildly brilliant show despite being ragged and exhausted at the tail end of their punishing tour schedule. While they were onstage, an admirer stole Tex’s only remaining dry shirt.

I spoke with JP Shilo some time ago on his return from a sold out European tour with Mick Harvey, performing the catalogue of the revered Rowland S Howard with Lydia Lunch and Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream, and he pondered ‘I think they seem to enjoy, dare I say, the "Aussie Spirit" and its directness, their ability to cut through bullshit … Rowland seems like the rare exception, like a rare bird, that merely popped out of the egg here. His European-ness seemed to even surpass the Euros. Then again his charm and talent seem to leave a lot of us in awe… The Pop Crimes shows were testament to this and went down an absolute treat with the audiences there”.

Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner stated in this article by writer Zachary Lipezas ‘Howard was probably the most influential minimalist/maximalist guitar player to me, the way he plays and rings out a chord or violently strikes one note is still mezmerising... I feel like the album had more effect on my life than my playing –that record is perfect, but also like a secret handshake, an admission to a smoky club where you can snugly bond with any other member’.

Zinner also created this excellent playlist of Australian music that was hugely influential for him for Secret Sounds in 2022.

Australian music lover/journalist

Andrew Stafford

wrote this exceptional 2015 article in the Guardian about timeless singer-songwriter Peter Milton Walsh, who he describes as ‘the near myth behind The Apartments’. Although greatly admired by those in the know, Walsh rarely performs in Australia and his albums barely make a splash - yet he has sold over 25,000 albums in France and sells out his highly anticipated European concerts. Stafford quotes an unnamed critic as stating that the Australian indifference to Walsh’s work amounted to “one of the great crimes of neglect in Australian music”.

Mark Richardson

recently wrote an excellent piece about the much covered Australian classic ‘Shivers’, written by Rowland, here:

Shivers Down My Spine

Louis Tillet, the recently departed singer-songwriter/pianist described as a ‘dark giant’ by Rolling Stone, who was absolutely adored in Greece, Berlin and France, but has a much smaller, though equally passionate, audience here, noted to me once the different reception as ‘The thing I noticed was, unlike Australia, where you are often asked to stop playing and take breaks, so they can sell more drinks at the bar, in Europe, they offered to shut the bar so people could listen to the music. And,at first,I found it almost unsettling that the rooms were so quiet when I was playing, until I realised that people were actually, really listening.’

I found these notes I scrawled after a show I played in Melbourne in the early 2000’s that expose the great divide between the appreciation that can be found in Europe in contrast to the irreverence towards our artists back home - even from those who should, and do, know far better, like me.

I arrive for soundcheck at the Tote. Brian Hooper at the bar, with another Melbourne muso who was familiar but I wasn’t sure if we’d met or not. We chat, have a laugh, they tell me they’re drinking Rowland’s rider cos he doesn’t drink anymore and it’d be a shame for it to go to waste. Oh wow what time is Rowland playing, I ask? Now, I’m told.

I wander into the main room and sure enough, its all of 6pm and there is Rowland playing to 3 or 4 punters, looking uncomfortable. I stand in the middle of the room alone and watch for a bit, awestruck, but I feel horribly conspicuous and self-conscious, and I’m itching with nerves too, so I head back to the bar. After a while, Rowland strides out past us, guitar case in hand, heading home. Brian has a word with him, says goodbye.

I remain at the bar, and feel ashamed - of myself, and of Australia.

Heartbreakingly, so many of the trailblazers that created this intensely unique sound and connection are gone now: Brian Hooper, Rowland S Howard, Spencer P Jones, Louis Tillet, Ron Peno, Conway Savage, David McComb.

Thankfully, there are of course a cavalcade of Australian originals continuing to slay audiences worldwide. Music delivery and data provided by streaming services and online music publications constantly shrinks the divide between Australia and the rest of the world, and makes the potential for international touring easier, although the cost is still incredibly prohibitive, especially for less established acts.

But wherever there are musicians with fire in their bones, a way to lay their hands on some cash and a determined will to take their music to the world, somehow, any way they can, to follow in the footsteps of those that pounded the path before them, the great Australian tradition of leaving it all behind for a leap into the abyss of a brave new world will never die.

Now your tracks are still fresh
And the branches are broken
Nothing was stolen
But your window was open
I followed the tracks that you left behind
I followed the rail and the curve of your spine
And the grass still grows on the side of the road
Sun still burns
And the rain still falls
Sin still burns little fiery holes
I hold on tight now to nothing at all

I believe you will lead me to a life of crime

(‘Life of Crime’ by The Triffids)

*This is a slightly updated version of an unpublished article I wrote in 2021.