The first Celibate Rifles long-player and the first album released by the HOT label is, predictably, a sentimental favourite for many fans. It's easy to see why. With its album title derived from the ironbark tree, Eucalyptus sideroxylon, and the sleeve illustration featuring an eye peering from a tree trunk eye-on-bark it was clear that here was a band with a bit more to it than the hyper-thrash of the first EP But Jacques, The Fish had suggested. Not to mention a way with shocking puns!
Wide-eyed, noisy, naοve, intelligent Sideroxylon is all of these things. It's also very funny: "Where Do I Go" features what may be the silliest backing vocals in rock history. Most of it, though, is very much of its time: raw, trebly production; breakneck tempos and punk's staple themes of suburban alienation and consumer culture are all very much in evidence on "Tick Tock", "Society", "This Week", "Gonna Cry" and "Gimme Gimme Gimme". "God Squad", the closer, takes everything over the top: a six-minute wah-wah rave-up complete with church organ, honky-tonk piano and a recital of the Lord's Prayer.
But there were also plenty of indications that the Rifles were already well ahead of the pack. The potency of the Dave Morris/Kent Steedman combination was obvious on "Anthem" and "This Week". Damien Lovelock's lyrics, too, were a cut above the generic average, both in their visual flair and their sense of perspective ("Killing Time" and "Anthem" both touch insightfully on the then-current war in the Falkland Islands, while "Tick Tock" and the hyperkinetic "Gonna Cry" are written from the point of view of a lonely and bored housewife).
The best songs, though, are the most restrained the junkie laments of "Back on the Corner" and "Ice Blue", in particular, are uncommonly poetic and sympathetic. The former especially displayed a broader emotional palette than any of the band's peers, with its push-pull tempo, long percussive coda and this unforgettable verse: "He makes his connection and he glows with delight/as his demons he banishes into the night/on a thin beam of white light he flies through the air/wrings out his hopes, trying to drown his despair."
Sideroxylon is a debut album in every respect: it's the sound of the Rifles working at their craft, establishing the basic elements of the band's sound and attempting (not always successfully) to expand on it. Perhaps its most charming attribute, though, is its gently self-reflexive feel: here is a second-generation Australian punk band that respects its musical traditions and yet is not afraid to take the piss out of them or themselves. While flawed, it stands as one of the most worthwhile Australian debuts of the early 80s.
Damien Lovelock once told me that this record was "the one that separates the men from the boys", or at least the diehard followers from the merely flirtatious. Consisting of just nine songs, the Rifles' second LP is, for my money, the band's finest (half-) hour. Self-titled, the album is colloquially referred to as 5 Languages on account of the sleeve artwork, wherein the band's name is printed in French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and English. While effectively minimalist, the sleeve gives no clue to the garden of earthly delights within.
This is the Celibate Rifles as they'd never been heard before and only rarely since: a far-reaching, genuinely experimental album that showed them to be much, much more original than their detractors suggested. A wealth of additional instruments is employed: organ, piano, flute, piccolo, saxophone and, perhaps a tad obviously on Rainforest, a chainsaw. None, however, appear for their own sake or, worse, to postulate some spurious notion of high-art sophistication; instead, they are used to enhance some of the Rifles' greatest songs.
The Celibate Rifles, then, is a creature of many moods. "Wild Desire" is the unexpectedly romantic and mellow opener, Dave Morris peeling off a liquid solo that merges with some spooky organ until both reach sonic nirvana. "Darlinghurst Confidential" is a spoken-word piece, a crackling Lovelock monologue accompanied by more wah-wah from Steedman and piano from the great Louis Tillett. "Pretty Colours" and "Netherworld" showcase Lovelock's continued growth as a singer and lyricist, his deep, rumbling vocals laced with the potent mixture of deadpan irony and menace that would become a band signature.
Of course, the band still rock like there's no tomorrow. "Back in the Red" stands among the band's greatest foot-to-the-floor thrashers a killer tune to rank with any of the band's garage-rock inspirations. And "Kiss Me Deadly" is driven by the kind of hammering one-note piano made famous by the Stooges on "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "Raw Power" one note, that is, until Steedman starts using his fists, elbows and possibly whole body to play the damn thing.
But the album's two most startling tracks remain freaks of the Rifles' catalogue. "Thank You America" is built upon three separate vocal narratives in the manner of the Velvet Underground's "The Murder Mystery" (the central part is a vivid reading of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Salute), but the soundscape the band builds around it is more akin to Hendrix's "Third Stone From the Sun"; a boiling, genuinely psychedelic cauldron of sound that completely engulfs the listener.
Not even that, though, can prepare you for the band's most ambitious musical statement, "Electric Snake River". A near-mystical narrative from Lovelock (in the tradition of Zuma-era Neil Young Aztec Gods, mescal twilights, you get the idea) unfolds over the fluid bassline of Michael Couvret, supplemented by 12-string acoustic guitar, flute and piccolo. The intensity builds and subsides with natural grace before the song climaxes in a death-defying onslaught, Steedman's guitar entering orbit with the most brilliantly sustained solo this side of Television's "Marquee Moon". It's really that good!
An unsung classic of Australian rock & roll, this album was the first of many Celibate Rifles peaks to follow.
The Turgid Miasma of Existence is the longest album title in the band's catalogue (it was originally subtitled The Happening Sounds of the Postmodern Degeneration) and probably the most apt. Made in grievous circumstances at Alberts Studios and, later, at Honeyfarm where all the band's early material was recorded, the tongue-in-cheek nomenclature turned out to be an all too accurate description for what is, in retrospect, by far the darkest record of the band's career.
It's certainly their most emotionally intense. Hard on the heels of James Darroch's untimely death and recorded in a period of severe record-label strife (HOT was declared bankrupted and, in the ensuing fallout, master tapes of the album were seized by creditors Alberts) its tone is largely sombre and disillusioned, with Lovelock's lyrics at their most biting and acute. Even the sound is a kind of turgid miasma: with Kent Steedman still learning his craft as a producer, it's a muddy whirlpool that somehow doesn't manage to obscure the brilliance of the songs.
"Bill Bonney Regrets" sets the tone. An elegy for one of Lovelock's university mentors culled and adapted from his first lecture notes, it describes how society eliminates individual expression to corrupt and reproduce itself. "Sentinel", the band's finest slow ballad to that point, picks up the theme "Freedom of choice, but who picks the choices?" but recontextualises it within a nightmarish description of an obsessive relationship. The musical accompaniment is just as unsettling.
Equally effective is the prison psychodrama of "Eddie" (also recorded acoustically, later to appear on Platters Du Jour) and "Glasshouse", which features some of Kent Steedman's most lyrical guitar playing. "No Sign" and "New Mistakes" are perhaps the two bleakest songs the group ever recorded, and it was becoming more obvious than ever that the Rifles were far more than just another punk band: melodies were increasingly developed; arrangements and lyrics were both subtle and sophisticated.
Perhaps ironically, then, Turgid Miasma's most obvious highlight saw the band reverting to more traditional fare. "Sometimes" is two minutes and 43 seconds of sheer unadulterated release. Next to "Back in the Red", it's the band's greatest rocker and, surrounded by the rest of the album's unrelieved tension, as jolting in its immediacy as an electric shock. But it wasn't enough for the ailing group. Turgid Miasma was unfairly panned by critics on its eventual release, and the Rifles appeared on the verge of splitting up.
But they still hadn't played at the home of their spiritual Godfathers in New York, and they weren't about to finish up before they had. Which led directly to
The story of the Celibate Rifles' first gig at New York's CBGBs their first gig outside Australia! is beautifully told by Damien Lovelock in Tracee Hutchison's Your Name's on the Door: 10 Years of Australian Music (ABC Books, 1992). "There were about 50 people there. I remember that, I was really embarrassed. I thought, fuck, we've come all this way from Australia, what must people think, that we've come all this way for nothing. Nobody's ever heard of us, we're doing this ridiculous support
"And we walked on and I didn't open my eyes for four songs, I was so nervous, but at the same time I was freaking out because I only ever had a few things that I wanted to do: I wanted to make a record and I wanted to play in New York. And I didn't headline big shit I still got there with no help from anyone, thanks very much. I remember I opened my eyes and all of these people, their lips were moving, they knew every fucking word to every Rifles song! And nothing was released in America in those days; basically nothing is released in America, we don't have deals there. So it was all import and we had no comprehension that people had ever heard of us there.
"We finished the gig and we got offstage and almost the entire crowd just raced into the dressing room, and all these people were, like, 'We've been waiting for years to hear you', and signing autographs the first autographs I think I ever signed was that night in New York. It was just amazing, just remarkable."
That first gig was not recorded, but the band returned to CBGBs post-haste, this time taking the mobile in with them, on 12 July 1986. The result was a marvellous, brilliantly succinct live album. The band tear through the hardest-rocking moments from 5 Languages and Turgid Miasma "Back in the Red", "Temper Temper", "Pretty Colours", "Netherworld", "Conflict of Instinct', "Sometimes" with untrammelled vigour and the small but devoted crowd responds gleefully: crank this disc up and the atmosphere somehow remains sufficiently intimate to make you feel as if the Rifles are playing in your own lounge room.
The album's real highlights come in the second half. The band are audacious enough to try out a new song, "Carmine Vattelly", with Lovelock using notes for the lyrics ("I have to use this, because I only wrote the words this afternoon", he apologises) before the band detonate the Only Ones' "City of Fun", "Conflict of Instinct" and "Sometimes" with enough supercharged energy to power New York itself. Radio Birdman's "Burn My Eye" and "SOS" close proceedings, the band sounding like a runaway train that's finally run off the rails.
Live albums are rarely as definitive as this one. If, like me, you were never lucky enough to see the Rifles in their early days, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang will give you a very good idea of what you missed out on.
For many listeners, this is the Celibate Rifles' best album. And all things considered, they have a point. True, Roman Beach Party isn't quite as wide-ranging as 5 Languages, and the sound is red-raw in places, notably on "Wonderful Life". (The reactionary boast that "no keyboards were used on this recording", which originally adorned the rear sleeve of the LP, was ironic when one considers that the massive snare sound achieved for new drummer Paul Larsen was a response to new percussion trends in rap, pioneered by the likes of LL Cool J and Janet Jackson.)
Pound for pound, though, Roman Beach Party is hard to beat. Recorded in Amsterdam with the band in high spirits, it's a perfectly balanced collection of killer tunes. It's also far more positive and purposeful in its outlook than Turgid Miasma. With a new rhythm section rounding out the core trio of Steedman, Morris and Lovelock (Rudy Morabito stepping in for Martin Couvret on bass; Larsen for Philip Jacquet), the band had never sounded so confident and direct. Larsen in particular brought the band's sound into sharper focus; suddenly, the Rifles had swing as well as speed.
Nowhere is this better heard than on the epic "Ocean Shore", which at a full seven minutes is not a second too long. Both languid yet unsettling, the more earthbound rhythm allows Steedman to take flight on a truly heroic solo as Lovelock intones a gravelly paean to hedonism: "So if the purpose of life is not to get pleasure/tell me what would you recommend?" he asks rhetorically, but even this is laced with menace: "I didn't hear you, better say it again/what would you recommend?" The last song, "Frank Hyde (Slight Return)", is also a twist: a surf instrumental reinforcing the band's links to Sydney's northern beaches.
In between, the Rifles do what they do best, only better and smarter than ever. "Jesus on TV" opens the album with an irresistible riff and Lovelock taking aim at a favourite lyrical target: false prophets. "Downtown" and "The More Things Change" both see Steedman and Morris trading guitar licks to devastating effect, with the latter brilliantly foreshadowing the late-80s bust: "there's a paranoia that the end is getting near/like watching your horizon as it slowly disappears". "Invisible Man" is another winner, given extra propulsion by a rap vocal that's equal parts Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and Grandmaster Flash's "The Message".
I haven't mentioned "A Word About Jones", "Strange Day, Stranger Nights", "I Still See You" and "Circle Sun", all of which have their own considerable merits. What really needs to be said is that at time of writing, Roman Beach Party is out of print. However, that doesn't necessarily mean you won't find it in the stores. Track a copy down as a matter of urgency. You need it.
The most commercially successful album in the Rifles catalogue and a deserved favourite among fans, Blind Ear briefly saw the band poised on the cusp of major success. Having signed to True Tone/EMI, who obviously felt the band were capable of reaching a far bigger audience, the Rifles responded with what remains their most accessible and cohesive album. Many of the songs "Johnny", "World Keeps Turning" and "Cycle" in particular remain staples of the band's live show.
A generous budget helped Kent Steedman give the band by far the fullest production sound the band had yet achieved, giving classics like "Johnny", "Electravision Mantra" and "Dial Om" a rippling, muscular texture. The difference is most apparent on the marvellous re-recording of "Wonderful Life", the throwaway nature of the original easily superseded by diamond-hard guitars and a deadly accurate Lovelock delivery. With Paul Larsen's drums at the front and centre of the sound (helped out by new bass player Jim Leone), the Rifles finally sounded like a genuinely hard and heavy rock band, not a thin and tinny bunch of punks.
The move towards a more orthodox rock sound carries its drawbacks. Lovelock's lyrics achieve a new emotional directness on "Johnny" and the wonderfully elegiac "Sean O' Farrell" one of two songs inspired by a lengthy stay in Northern Ireland but "Belfast" and the dull plod-rock of "They're Killing Us All" are simply obvious. (The worst offender, "El Salvador", was a B-side later added to the album, and is so didactic that even Midnight Oil, whom Lovelock once famously dubbed "the new Jerry Falwells", might be embarrassed. Turgid miasma indeed!) Having previously wondered about life's moral certainties in "Conflict of Instinct", Lovelock had begun resorting to slogans to make a point.
Fortunately, the music was mostly good enough to obscure the lyrical shortcomings. This is an album for guitar lovers, with the Steedman/Morris combination duelling compellingly on the long outro for "Johnny". Once drenching his solos in wah-wah and other effects, Steedman was now making clean, steely runs, giving the songs added clarity and power. Equally impressive are the arrangements. Structurally and sonically, "Electravision Mantra" is riveting, a heart-stopping blend of aggression and invention.
And what can one say about the triumphant, gospel-tinged romp of "O Salvation"? Featuring a timeless theme and a so-old-it's-new-again riff, it would probably have been a major hit if only it had been released a couple of years later; as it was, it blasted open the doors to a whole new audience and presaged the eventual obliteration of the line that divided alternative and mainstream. Had commercial radio not been so myopic, and had EMI followed through on their investment after their partnership with True Tone dissolved, who knows what may have happened?
This indispensable collection of rarities, B-sides, different takes and remixes is kind of an alternative Rifles' greatest hits. This is where you will find the legendary debut EP But Jacques, The Fish; rare vocal turns by Dave Morris ("E=MC²") and Kent Steedman ("Rainforest"); even rarer early forays into acoustic territory including the sardonic "Pretty Pictures"; a few live tracks; and cover versions of songs made famous by artists as varied as Patti Smith and Tony Joe White. In short, it's fabulous.
Of course, Jacques is worth the price of entry here alone (providing you can find the CD, which is out of print a bummer, especially considering Platters was released partly so people wouldn't have to shell out exorbitant amounts for the rarities it collects). All four tracks capture the essence of the early Rifles: laser tempos; pipeline guitars (check out the waxhead anthem "Tubular Greens") and brazen good humour. There's even an anti-smoking rap featuring the Marlboro theme. It still sounds fresher than most punk artefacts of the era (1982), and more fun than any of them.
But what a trove of riches besides! The re-recorded "Eddie" showed the band should never have been so shy of their acoustic guitars for so long. "Dancing Barefoot" has a wonderful swinging feel that's missing from Patti Smith's greatest love song, and just as much gravitas. Kent's vocal on "Rainforest" is completely untutored, and all the more passionate for it it has the edge on the 5 Languages version. Live takes of "Ice Blue" and "Thank You America" are radically revamped.
There are liner notes by long-time Rifles soundman Colin "Croc" Ford and additional notes on the songs by Dave Morris that are amusing and enlightening (on the live "Jesus on TV": "We recorded this in a revolving restaurant it was a real spin-out.") This is one of the rare odds-and-sods collections that stands up in its own right, and in many ways, it's a better representation of what the band are all about than the later best-of collection Sofa. If you're of the opinion that two or three Rifles albums will be enough for your collection, you should give serious thought to making sure this is one of them.
Delayed by the collapse of True Tone, leaving the band temporarily without a deal, the official follow-up to Blind Ear eventually emerged (courtesy of Festival Records) in late 1992, by which time rock was no longer a dirty word: Nirvana were the biggest band in the world and grunge was record company hard currency. But if should-have-been-hits "Johnny" and "O Salvation" had appeared two years too early, now the increasingly luckless Rifles were regarded as old school punks caught in what was being touted as a generational change.
None of which has anything to do with the music. But the truth is that after the long wait, Heaven on a Stick was a slight letdown, and while it has its high spots, there's nothing on this album (with the possible exception of "Electric Flowers") as immediate as the best of Blind Ear. Recorded in fractious circumstances by Radio Birdman's Rob Younger the source of much studio tension, and a move which probably only provided the band's critics with extra ammunition anyway it's an overlong, rather patchy set.
The news is far from all bad. Gifted sticksman Nik Rieth was to prove a more than adequate replacement for the departed Paul Larsen. And Heaven of a Stick contains two of the Rifles' greatest moments: "Cold Wind" is as hard-nosed as anything the band (or anyone) ever recorded, and "Groovin' in the Land of Love" manages to be witty, artful and rocking. Taken together, these are vivid snapshots of Sydney's two sides: half Darlinghurst Confidential, half high-society Double Bay. They also feature perhaps the most mature vocal performances of Damien Lovelock's career, both of them perfectly judged and executed.
The rest of the album is all over the shop. Great rockers like "Light of Life"; "Compared to What" and a cheery take of Lou Reed's "Wild Child" rub up against slide-guitar blues in "Excommunication" and long, moody reveries ("Dream of Night"; "Outside My Window"). Some fillers don't help matters: "G.D. Absolutely" is self-help up-with-people fluff; "Dream of Night" is a plodder, and "Happy House", despite being a mosh-friendly live favourite, comes off like an inferior re-write of "Electravision Mantra". (I can hear the rocks already landing on the roof as I write this.) Perhaps the band was trying to show off all its aces; regardless, the end result is unbalanced and unwieldy.
In its own way, Heaven on a Stick embodies all the Rifles strengths, weaknesses and contradictions. Good fortune having deserted them, the band went for broke and instead came up with this contentious, love-it-or-hate-it album. Still, the program button on your CD player is there for a reason. My alternative tracklist/sequence: "Light of Life"; "Cold Wind"; "Excommunication"; "Contemplating R.D. Laing"; "S'n'M TV"; "Groovin' in the Land of Love"; "Electric Flowers"; "Compared to What?"; "Outside my Window"; "Wild Child". It works for me.
The second live album of the band's career, this lengthy 18-tracker is culled from three shows. Two-thirds is taken from a performance at CBGBs in 1992, while five songs are taken from a Sydney show recorded two years earlier. The final track, a blistering version of the blues standard "Baby Please Don't Go", was recorded for Triple J's Live at the Wireless, but it doesn't save what is otherwise a relatively dispensable item. There's a nagging feeling of redundancy about this recording; few bands are good enough to get away with one live album and next to the great Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Yizgarnoff was bound to suffer.
Yizgarnoff is that it's a lot more fun to dip into than to sit through in its entirety, and even then it's an occasional proposition. Lacking the vitality and atmosphere of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the CBGBs set is marred by poor vocals Lovelock was ill at the time of the recording, which makes one wonder about the wisdom of going ahead with the end result and the band sound uncharacteristically ragged in parts, no more so than on "Happy House", which thrashes at about twice its recorded speed to no avail (more rocks on the roof )
Things pick up considerably for the Sydney set, which features excellent versions of "Tubular Greens", "Invisible Man", "Glasshouse", "O Salvation" and "Ocean Shore". There's also a sense of bonhomie and audience interaction missing from the CBGBs show (Lovelock: "For your money, you get to dance, listen, have fun, meet interesting people, but you don't get to throw cans. That costs a lot more"). With "Baby, Please Don't Go" rounding out proceedings, you have a fine six-track EP here. Overall, though, Yizgarnoff shorthand for "youse going off!", in case you're still wondering is really for fans only. Of course, if you're still reading this, you probably are.
Best-of albums are always tricky to rate: every fan of a group has their own opinion about what should and shouldn't be included in their ultimate collection, this writer included; and there's always the problem of hearing songs out of context, often resulting in a disjointed mish-mash. For such a consistent album-oriented band as the Celibate Rifles, these problems are magnified, even over a generous collection spanning 20 tracks. Still, this is a pretty reasonable summation of the band's early career, covering the first five albums up to and including Blind Ear.
There are certainly some tough omissions and questionable inclusions, but having said that, it's pretty hard for a Rifles collection to go seriously wrong. The question you need to ask yourself is how much you really need it: if you already own the studio albums, there's nothing here you don't already know, in which case you'd be just as well advised to make your own tape of highlights. Sofa, like most compilations, is better value for the casual fan looking for a decent overview, or alternatively for the enthusiastic newcomer looking for a way in to the band's work.
On that score, I'd say Sofa does a good job. It manages to cover most of the band's bases and audience favourites (although the exclusion of "O Salvation" is truly baffling on both aesthetic and populist grounds). The sequencing is not strictly chronological, allowing for a full album experience rather than a timeline effect. Still, I would hope that converts might be led back to the original records rather than using Sofa as a catch-all substitute.
Arguably the best feature of Sofa is the liner notes, written with obvious love by prominent American critic David Fricke. These work well both as tribute and as testament, providing a critical summation of the Rifles' career without losing the passion of an unabashed fan. Ultimately, though, Sofa is as essential or as dispensable a purchase as your level of experience with the Celibate Rifles demands.
A blazing return to form: curiously, the band sounds far more settled and relaxed within themselves on this new studio outing than was the case on Heaven on a Stick. Credit is due to the excellent production by Paul Tagg and Phil Punch, who sand away some of the slickness of Blind Ear and the occasional fussiness of Heaven on a Stick without any loss of power; mostly, they just manage to increase the voltage. Whatever the reason, the band sound like they're all pulling in the same direction again and, next to Blind Ear, this is the Rifles' best-sounding record.
Not all of it works, though. Like Stick, Spaceman in a Satin Suit suffers for being slightly too long. It's also poorly sequenced, with the slower tracks interrupting the album's flow and contributing to the album's sprawling feel. "Cuttin' it Fine" is a good-time throwaway (more rocks on the roof!) and, humour value aside, there was really no justification for extending Rudy Morabito's title concept into the deliberately hideous synth squiggle that closes the album.
Gripes aside, Spaceman is another fine collection. "Spirits" bursts out of the gates at warp-speed before Nik Rieth rolls into "Kev the Head", a lacerating study of wasted potential. "City of Hope" and "Brickin' Around" (the latter first unveiled on Yizgarnoff) are brutally exhilarating assaults, with Damien Lovelock testifying to the continued joys of playing together: "Here with my friends we can do anything/we seem to be accelerating" is a great lyric for a band by now well into its second decade.
Longer tracks like "Living What I Dream", "Whatever You Want" and "Big World" stretch out the band without distracting indulgences. "Big World" in particular swings like a wrecking ball, reinforcing the Rifles' hard-rock credentials. "This Gift" is all bright-eyed optimism and "Kathy Says" is a lock-step rhythmic barrage. "Let's Do It Again" would (but for the title track) have been the perfect closer; a garage-rock classic nicely in tune with the band's own oeuvre.
Sadly, the world seemed to be leaving the Celibate Rifles further behind. Neglected by youth radio and not helped by cheap and cheerful cover art, Spaceman in a Satin Suit was the band's worst-selling album to that point and forced a lengthy retreat from the studio, if not quite the stage. Tinker with the tracklisting, though, and this ranks right up there with their best work. I find the following works well: "Spirits"; "Brickin' Around"; "Kev the Head"; "City of Hope"; "Seams"; "Living What I Dream"; "Kathy Says"; "Whatever You Want"; "Diamond Sky"; "This Gift"; "Big World"; "Let's Do It Again".
Over the Celibate Rifles career, two projects were long mooted. According to Dave Morris' liner notes for Platters Du Jour, the idea of an acoustic album had been around since at least the Turgid Miasma sessions, out of which came the previously mentioned reworking of "Eddie". The other proposal was for an album of covers. On the Quiet allowed the band a bet each way: eight tracks are acoustic versions of Rifles songs, while the remaining four are all-electric covers of "lost" Australian songs.
The acoustic selections are a treat, with the band reaching far back into their catalogue to dust off some of their most subtle and thoughtful moments: "Netherworld"; "Back on the Corner"; "Sentinel"; "No Sign". The most surprising choice is "Jesus on TV", and it's also one of the best: a gospel-inflected stomp performed with appropriately evangelical fervour. Would have been even better if they'd got a choir in the studio
With precisely no extra trappings, On the Quiet sounds dry and bare in places: this truly is the Rifles unplugged! Sometimes one's left wishing for some extra instrumental colour it's easy to imagine a cello filling out the break in "Netherworld", for example but it's a credit to the skills of the band that they are able to provide the necessary melodic detail to make this work. Jim Leone's bass playing, in particular, is essential to driving the sound forward while simultaneously providing counterpoints to the delicate guitar interplays. Campfire strum-alongs these are not!
There are two exceptions to this observation. "Electric Flowers", a requiem for a lost friend, always had the communal feel of a folk song and it sounds even more moving and poetic in this setting. "Electric Snake River", on the other hand, simply sounds reduced. This is ironic, considering acoustic guitars provided the essential bedding for the original version, but here, stripped back to the bone, it's the one song that sounds poorer for the experiment.
That leaves the covers, and the only regret here is there's not more of them. Apparently a start was once made on a whole album's worth of material but tapes were sadly lost (web page maintainer Guru Stew may have the full story behind this one). What we get instead are straight-up versions of four largely forgotten gems: the Sports' "What Did the Detectives Say", Rose Tattoo's "Astra Wally", the Lipstick Killers' "Hindu Gods of Love" and Tamam Shud's "Hot Generation". It's great stuff, but it leaves this fan wondering what might have been. One can only hope that some band in the future will pay the Rifles a similar compliment.
What a joy this is coming six whole years after Spaceman in a Satin Suit, fans could certainly have been forgiven for giving up all hope of ever hearing another full studio album of new material from the Celibate Rifles. This is a true against the odds story: with no money, no deal and next to no interest, the band have fallen back on DIY tradition and done the whole damn thing themselves.
It must be said, though, that at first glance A Mid-Stream of Consciousness does not look exactly promising. With the notable exception of 5 Languages, cover art has not always been a strong point of this band (cf. Turgid Miasma, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang). In their defence, God knows there was no record company cookie jar to reach into but a jar of piss? C'mon guys as if the job of getting this album into stores won't be hard enough!
Quibbling over artwork, though, obscures the fact that Mid-Stream is a magnificent album arguably the best the band have made since Roman Beach Party, and certainly their most consistent. Its greatest virtues are its sense of balance and variety: with nothing to lose, the band has not been afraid to build on some of the truths made so obvious by On the Quiet. Namely, that (a) the Celibate Rifles are, and always have been terrific songwriters and players, and (b) as such, they're often best appreciated when they slow down the tempos and turn down the volume.
Two of the strongest tracks on Mid-Stream ("Child of Mine" and "Me and Slick and Willie") are acoustic ballads with strong country overtones; another (the lovely "G's Gone") is piano-based. "Child of Mine" is probably the most personal and heartfelt lyric Damien Lovelock has committed to tape; the warmth and atmosphere generated by the band is not of menace, but bottomless wonder and beauty. And "Me and Slick and Willie" is a wonderfully sly skiffle check out the acoustic picking.
Lest all this sound very un-rock & roll, rest assured the band kick just as hard as ever. "Wake Up" has been around for a while without ever making an album cut; now, it's a short, sharp shock to rank with "Dial Om" and "5 Lamps". Great lyrics, too: "Wake up to sexuality, ignore what some might say/and if it takes your fancy, be astonishingly gay" is just one treat. "Tripping at the Mall" features a giant-killing riff and the timely "Talk Back Saviour" sinks the boot into at least two well-known radio broadcasters to deadly effect.
The album is perfectly to the point and, over 11 tracks (14 including three covers included on the first pressing), there's not a dud in sight. And you should get in quick, too, because you wouldn't want to be without the majestic version of the Stones' "Child of the Moon", not to mention the Replacements' effervescent "I Will Dare" and the Visitors' "Journey By Sledge". In a smart move, more than 10 seconds separate the album proper and the cover versions, marking them as discrete listening experiences.
Encouragingly, A Mid-Stream of Consciousness has already garnered its share of great reviews and seems to have been received with genuine curiosity in radio circles, with "I Shoulda" and now "G's Gone" receiving airplay on Triple J. Whether due to the long delay between releases, Damien Lovelock's rising media profile, a combination of the two or just plain good songs, one can only hope that the band's fortunes will be revived as a new generation of listeners is exposed to one of the world's last great rock & roll bands.
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