"At a time when most punk outrage is just witless spleen at 90mph these Aussie spitfires have fired off a release that shakes with lyric force and experimental valour, not just speed and volume."First signings to HOT, Australia's best label since Castlemaine XXXX, The Celibate Rifles have had four years to evolve into a bucking, rearing creature that hijacks your turntable and confounds your friends. With their roots firmly planted on the Stooges/NY Dolls side of the tracks, the Rifles have survived on a series of evolutionary stages to reach peak form with this album that sees them oscillate wildly from loud and thrashy to subdued and glowering.
It's their total disregard for cool that sets them apart - who else could overlay the basics of guitar, bass and drums with wild snatches of glockenspiel, dulcimer, zither, clarinet, cello and piano to produce songs that fluctuate from base to intricate, songs that defy the parameters of what we're used to and marry the wilder extravagances of guitarist Kent Steedman's music with the incisive and unfashionably poetic lyrical distractions of vocalist Damien Lovelock.
The Rifles plead with you to help save tropical rainforests and sing of the neuroses of Twentieth-Century life , veering from the sad monotone of Glasshouse to the boiling bass driven ferment of Temper Temper Mr Kemper and the sombre soliloquy for Eddie, a habitual criminal.
They take you with them on a roller coaster ride through Bill Bonney Regrets and the agitated frustrations thrashed out in Sometimes. JNS takes a bitter swipe at the lifestyles the Rifles despise ("Cappucino lifestyle, O so semiotic, token friend from Art School, so fashionably neurotic") and comes closest to highlighting the title of this glorious collection of songs.
The Celibate Rifles make music for their own amusement primarily, and to entertain their friends. Their humour is directed at themselves and I'll bet that live they'd leave you wrung out and gasping for more. "Consistency is less than romantic" Lovelock howls, choked by the mundanities of the nine to five world he has to live in..."let's make some new mistakes, I'm sick of all the old ones".
A sountrack for those difficult moments, The Turgid Miasma Of Existence, offers hope and comfort and is guaranteed to get you through your day. - Helen Fitzgerald, Melody Maker, 12 July 1986
The Celibate Rifles:
Damien Lovelock (vocals), Kent Steedman (guitar), Dave Morris (guitar), Mike Couvret (bass), Phil Jacquet (drums)
traxfromwax:
1. Bill Bonney Regrets 2. Conflict Of Instinct 3. Temper Temper Mr. Kemper 4. Sentinel 5. Some Kind Of Feeling 6. Glasshouse 7. Sometimes 8. No Sign 9. Eddie 10. Jns 11. New Mistakes
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