Sydney Punk: Raw Prawn

In the third of a four-part series profiling current Sydney punk bands, MAX EASTON tackles Raw Prawn – Chris Nailer, Alex Kiers, Al Haddock and Anna John – whose songs he calls “sardonic works of kitschy nostalgia.”

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Al is hunched over a sea of newspapers at the Glengarry, his half-emptied glass sweating on the broadsheets that sprawl across the bar. I fail to recognise him, pour myself a beer from a just-purchased jug and set aside two glasses in wait for Anna and Alex of Raw Prawn. On a 42” LCD screen to my right, India plays the West Indies in a foregone conclusion.

Raw Prawn are maybe the most tentative link to punk of the four bands interviewed in this series, but they represent an aspect of its evolution, particularly in modern-day Australia. Thematically they’ve been drawn towards distractions, settling on humour as a way of examining the world around them. The songs on their 7” None Left and those of their live set are sardonic works of kitschy nostalgia that reject social vigour and, in narrating lists of brave-faced pleasantries, hint at something darker having passed. Their take on punk is nothing like the hiss at the world of Oily Boys or Low Life’s representation of a city’s scummy underbelly, but it does place its subjects somewhere at those edges. And of course, the songs are also rabid, sloppy and half-spat.

Anna and Alex arrive through the Glengarry’s front door, and as Al joins them from the bar we make for the quiet of the beer garden out the back. Chris later joins us, making a circle that counts every member of Raw Prawn and it takes me until I get home to realise that the outdoor gas heater I was sitting under had slowly burned a hole in the hood of my jacket.

“I don’t think we’re a punk band.”

“We’ve recorded already, but we’re doing it all over again from scratch,” Alex says in reference to their upcoming LP. “What we’ve recorded so far is pretty simple, straight-up more of a punk record, and we don’t want it to be like that. Because I don’t think we’re a punk band.”

“I think we’re punk in a way,” Al says. “But there’s not a regimented ‘strum this way and do this’ kind of thing, but we’re not rock. I don’t believe in punk being rancid either.”

“We want something more diverse for our record,” Alex continues. “So we’re doing it again and making it a bit more…”

“…of a collage of different things,” Anna finishes. “I imagine it as something that’s a bit more like Chrome, not in how it sounds, but how it’s snippets that are put together. It’s not a new direction, we just want to develop it a little bit.”

“I kind of want to be more poetic, if I could,” Alex says. “I’d prefer to stop writing songs about such simple things. I’d rather be more obscure than so obvious all the time.”

“I think there’s some great everyman poetry in your lyrics though,” Anna says.

“Yeah, no one wants to get too deep, Alex,” Al murmurs from underneath his hood, tightened by the cords to shield his face from the cold.

“I don’t mean deep, just less simple, you know?,” says Alex. “We have a song which is basically just about all the excuses I give for being late all the time. I guess there’ll be a lot less of that kind of lyric on the record.”

In the past, the undercooked aspect of Raw Prawn has lent it an air of exasperation. Lyrically, the lack of direct meaning or insight has felt like a subtle statement about ignoring 21st century trials. Dangerous situations are boiled down to being in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’, a sense of the overwhelmed is portrayed by absent-minded excuses and, overall, it’s the hints at what Raw Prawn are ignoring that makes it feel somewhat sordid or ugly. Yet the band is intent on evolution, and in Al’s case at least, Raw Prawn is less of a reflection of personality and more of an external pursuit.

“I love playing in Raw Prawn,” Al starts. “But I love it because it’s different to other things that I do. Just because I really enjoy playing in this band doesn’t mean it resonates properly with me, but I still enjoy or understand the lyrics. I don’t think Raw Prawn, or anything I do, really represents me. That’s just music though; you can be whoever you want.”

“If I want to put on a punk show, there aren’t enough punk bands to do it.”

Raw Prawn – and all of these bands – are quick to point out that it’s not exactly easy to completely disappear into who or what you want to be in Sydney. “If I want to put on a punk show,” Dean from Housewives says a week earlier, “There aren’t enough punk bands to do it. I have to put something in that’s really out of place.” For better or worse, it’s this that kills any form of a genre-dependent scene.

“I don’t think you can consider a place in Sydney; it’s too small,” Al says. “Unlike Melbourne, where you can play a hardcore show or some garage-rock show; you just can’t do it here. There aren’t enough bands without playing with the same people every night, so you have to play with different types of bands.”

“It’s good, it diversifies things and people see other stuff,” says Anna, who also plays with electronic three-piece Holy Balm. “When it comes to things like that, people have to put in the work to foster a scene and make it blossom. Although, it does get a bit claustrophobic when you go to book a show and ask the question of who you want to play with.”

“When you look at Melbourne, sure there are heaps of bands, but most of those fucking suck.”

“The incestuousness of it is hard to deal with, but it gets like that anywhere,” Al says. “I think [the Sydney situation] is a positive thing. In a way, grouping it all together and having a show where it’s all one style of band now seems so dull and irrelevant. A place like Melbourne may be more integrated, but they’re still insular. The hardcore punks who are into noise music are a real crew and the rest of it seems fairly straight-forward, each-genre-for-themselves kinda stuff. In any city where there are heaps of people doing something, whether it’s installation art in fuckin’ Germany or whatever, there are gonna be heaps of people who are shit. When you look at Melbourne, sure there are heaps of bands, but most of those bands fucking suck.”

“Art is the same down there,” Anna adds. “Heaps of it is balls.”

A pre-recorded whistle whips outside from the adjacent pokies room, signifying some kind of financial victory for whoever sits on the other side of the machine. They let the noises roll over, and despite the sounds ticking away in the background, there doesn’t appear to be any sign of joy from across the wall. As the machine keeps singing, Al addresses the release of their 7”, talking with the kind of conviction that only drinking all afternoon can provide. When it comes to a discussion about the seeming stranglehold of guitar rock in Sydney, he immediately shoots to defend Nic Warnock of R.I.P. Society (the label that carries Raw Prawn), who has been criticised for homogeneity despite hosting a wide array of styles on his label.

“That [7”] does not represent us in any way.”

“There’s a lot of stigma behind that label that comes from weird places,” Al says. “A lot of people don’t like Nic, but he’s a really good guy and he supports so much shit and puts up with shit as well. He’s a sick dude, no doubt. Heaps of people think he suffocated the Sydney scene, but I think he reinvigorated it. With Nic or R.I.P. putting out our 7”, it was no surprise that it sold really well.”

“If we self-released the seven, I can’t imagine that it would’ve even moved,” Chris says. “I don’t think Nic’s a tastemaker, or making taste necessarily, but people all around the world like to look to him.”

“I’d rather anything but that seven though,” Alex moans. “That does not represent us in any which way. I think anyone who buys the LP because of it will be a little a confused. But I kind of want that to be honest. A whole album of songs like the seven-inch would be really boring.”

+

Raw Prawn’s ‘None Left’ 7” came out on R.I.P. Society. They are none left. Chart their progress through the wonder of social media.

PREVIOUSLY:
Sydney Punk: Housewives
Sydney Punk: Low Life