There were two kids at high school back in the mid-‘80s who carried cans of spray paint like undercover cops brandished police ID, defacing everything from the doors of the school train to the desks in the local council chamber. Those kids were into skate punk and a bit of LA metal, taking little interest in the subliminally subversive Devo, and the jarring one-fingered anti-pop salute of The Fall. Had it been different, those kids might have, 30 years later, embraced Austin’s Spray Paint.
Punters On a Barge, the second Spray Paint record released on Homeless Records (after last year’s equally abrasive, Clear Blood, Regular Acid), is the type of record that reminds you why punk rock exists, by definition, on the margins. Ian’s Theme sets the scene with jagged chords, thrashing…
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…beats and atonal vocals; Entry Level Human is the pithy dissection of humanity that Devo always wanted to commit to record; the brutal consistency of Polar Beer is metaphor for the monotony of contemporary existence; and if George Brandis’ department started accompanying rejections for arts funding with I Hate Your Paintings, he’d make some unlikely friends. Day of the Rope infects the jarring punk with an electronic aesthetic. At five minutes, it’s the longest song on the album, and it’s too pissed off to take any prisoners.
Yoopy D.B. is the sound of errant kids in an urban garage creating noise under the guise of a song; Soiled is haunting, almost threatening but strangely inviting and Fishing spears the ego of a local fishing champion with a combination of razor-sharp beats and rumbling guitar. The world isn’t the sugary place some would like us to believe it is, and Spray Paint know just that.