Bird Nerds

Bitch Prefect’s second album is tougher, bitterer and more punk than the first. It also ups the songwriting chops in a big way, writes DOUG WALLEN.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] It takes a few spins to tease out, but there’s a twofold revelation waiting at the heart of Bitch Prefect’s second album: 1) It’s a punk record, in a lot of ways; 2) It sports a huge growth in songwriting chops from last year’s very good Big Time, swapping tunes about keeping your girlfriend conveniently on ice and playing Guess the Person for ones about sad drunken dads and “teenage pensioners” littering the uni. Shambling and untrained is still the default mode of delivery, which can bely that darkening and deepening of subject matter, but Bird Nerds soon reveals its full pissed-off potential.

‘Drifting’ was the first song we heard off the record, and it’s a total decoy: an off-key lullaby of easy rhyming that makes the trio’s amateurish approach clear upfront. I say it’s a decoy because it’s a relative anomaly among the songs that follow, a bit of sweetener that doesn’t hint at the downtrodden, often mean-spirited nature of the others. We get more of a hint in the following ‘Adelaide’, an ode to the Melbourne band’s original hometown that’s not exactly all roses: “I ain’t into this town/It ain’t into me neither,” sings Liam Kenny at the chorus. “Might be time to leave her.” It deals in a homemade version of Byrds twang while coming out with a cool “nah nah nah” chorus, but it doesn’t skimp on the misanthropy: “I don’t like anyone,” sulks Kenny, elsewhere in the song singing, “Went to the football park/Told me to leave cos I was gettin’ too dark.”

“They are, as Ray Davies once enshrined, ‘tales of drunkenness and cruelty.’”

From there, the more fucked-up themes start to come out. They are, as Ray Davies once enshrined, “tales of drunkenness and cruelty,” about failure and fumbling all out of place. “You want a fella but I only want a friend,” laments Scott O’Hara on the down-and-out country dirge ‘It’s a Shame’, about never quite being on the same page as the person across from you. “Next thing I know, you’ve got another lover.” Later, on ‘Better Next Time’, O’Hara details requesting wine from his nana by letter, only to be turned down – how pitiful is that? – and then “trying to make a dime” at the horse races. Lo and behold, he backs a loser.

Edged with dodgy psych guitar, that family-themed song packs the album’s most crushing lyrics: “Now my dad’s not a fighter, but he’s one of a kind/And it breaks my heart to see him gettin’ drunk all the time.” It reminds me of the off-the-cuff frankness of Scott & Charlene’s Wedding’s ‘Two Weeks’ (“I’m old-fashioned just like my dad … And I drink in the day when I get depressed”) and also reminds me that SACW’s Craig Dermody used to play with O’Hara in Lindsay Lowhand.

But it’s Kenny that kicks the band’s punk side into gear with ‘Shipped It’, a snide little number with the old-school refrain “Shipped it overseas.” Between his thin yelp and all-around trash-talking (“Now you’re a nuisance/Now you’re a fuckhead”), it’s far removed from the scuffed DIY guitar-pop and laconic self-deprecation that defined the first album. It’s meatier and more overcast in sound too. Then there’s ‘University Fiend’, the longest song here. On it Kenny describes a “business-minded asshole” and “sheltered-up mole” who casts a shadow over the classroom by preaching his conservative views (likes: talkback radio; doesn’t like: social welfare). Worse of all, the guy’s only 18. The song stretches out in a way that’s rare for Bitch Prefect, with a twinkling keyboard melody and draggy guitar effect in what turns out to be a lengthy (for them) bridge.

O’Hara answers with the agitated forward thrust of ‘An Education (Feeling Lazy)’, about “learning nothing” at uni and blowing every dole cheque. As usual, nothing’s going his way: “The veranda’s falling down … my friends, they all left town.” He openly admits that he’s lazy and stubborn, making an effort only to look busy enough to feign productivity for Centrelink. It’s preceded by O’Hara’s jittery ‘Special Boy’, marked by this impossible-to-ignore line of bitter thinking aloud: “I could have been a very special boy/But Daddy never liked me, and Mummy never seemed to care/The only time she touched me was gettin’ knots out of my hair/She hated my fucking hair!” Shoring up his shot vocal take is that rudimentary guitar jangle, suddenly toughened into hard-driving Kraut-ish meanness in a fascinating shocker of a metamorphosis.

“They swing where their moods do. It’s not flattering, but it feels incredibly honest.”

By comparison, ‘Don’t Talk to Me’ is a lilting castoff (but nice enough) and the closing ‘End of Time’ a fitting bookend to ‘Drifting’. Yet even behind the happy-go-lucky flaws of Pat Telfer’s dilapidated acoustic guitar, there’s mention of being robbed blind in your sleep. Then all three join in to repeat the closing words: “See the sun at the end of time.” It’s a funny ending – a light bit of optimism following a whole lot of venting and complaining. Yet it fits, because Bitch Prefect don’t do just nice pop songs or mean punk songs. Instead, they swing where their moods do. It’s not flattering, but it feels incredibly honest.

As for the jangle thing, nothing here makes me think of Flying Nun. The Wedding Present, maybe; Beat Happening, sure. Mostly, though, I keep coming back to that perfect self-titled Modern Lovers album in my head; Bird Nerds doesn’t sound much like it, but it’s got that same strain of brave spirit. That mix of chugging ‘Roadrunner’-style catchiness and I’m Straight’-style lashing out at the fuckers we see around us. It’s unpolished and often dodgy as hell, but it’s all the more thrilling for putting itself way out there, unguarded.

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‘Bird Nerds’ is out now through Bedroom Suck.

Sat, Nov 23 – The Metro, Adelaide, SA [w/Bruff Superior, Body Horror + Psalm Trio]
Fri, Nov 29 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD [w/Cured Pink + Primitive Motion]
Sat, Nov 30 – Brighton Up Bar, Sydney, NSW [w/M.O.B. + Nathan John Roche]
Fri, Dec 6 – The Tote, Melbourne, VIC [w/Super Wild Horses + Woollen Kits]