PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS. NO, WE’RE NOT ONLY FEATURING THEM BECAUSE THEY HAVE AN AWESOME NAME. HONEST.
Maverick Aussies offsetting hard rock hooks with surreal yarns and proggy structures.
No band is created in a vacuum. But while listening to music invariably inspires the playing of it, as a teenager Jack McEwan found the lightbulb popping in his head thanks to an absurdist TV sitcom and a college project.
“I was doing a graphic design course and watching a lot of The Mighty Boosh,” says the 26-year-old from Perth, “and the lecturer said, ‘OK, for your next project… design a band!’ So I kind of wanted to make a group that Vince Noir would be in.”
Naturally, he named them Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, and the music seemed to follow easily.
“It was really easy to write – I came up with Marmalade March, Cornflake and Cubensis Lenses in the next few days.”
Those songs would form the opening salvoes of their debut album, 2016’s High Visceral pt 1, which they followed with High Visceral pt 2, before coming up with new album And Now For The Whatchamacallit. Don’t be fooled by the amusing title and band name – this is no novelty act. PPC rock hard, heavy and unconventional.
Falsetto vocals, writhing, fuzz-caked guitar riffs, twin lead ‘guitarmony’ and a platform-booted rhythm section offer no shortage of trad-rock entry points, but then their song structures push and pull, pause, stutter and strain at the leash, then swim beatifically through lysergic lakes or smash the place up, as and when the mood takes them.
You can hear roots in the fertile breeding ground of the Perth music scene they emerged from, which had spawned international names such as Tame Impala and Pond by the time McEwan and co got their act together. Yet PPC are also informed by the more adventurous fringes of American hard rock, which first turned McEwan on when he moved to Oz from the UK with his family as a 13-year-old in the mid-200os, and soon afterwards began learning guitar.
“Straight chords were never really that interesting after hearing The Mars Volta and especially Tool. Through those bands and stuff like [Aussie progmetallers] Karnivool, I really got into that prog world of things, and it seemed exciting to hear something that seemed to rebel against pop music.”
PPC retain a pop accessibility, though, alongside a proggy unpredictability, and a rock bite. They also have a penchant for weaving songs out of tall tales, as they did with the album’s lead single, Bill’s Mandolin.
“We were touring Europe and when we played in England I went to my gran’s house. I remembered playing this mandolin of my grandad’s as a kid, and it meant a lot to me so I decided to take it with me. It went on every adventure with us, so I figured it needs a little story about its adventures…”
Another highlight is the curiously titled My Friend’s A Liquid – inspired by a festival encounter.
“It was 3am and I ended up having a chat with this guy who had been painted like a Smurf, but it had worn off and he wasn’t blue anymore, just patches of blue. He’d lost his friend because he said he’d turned into a liquid. I thought that was hilarious.“
And Vince Noir would surely know exactly what he meant. Js
“I WAS DOING A GRAPHIC DESIGN COURSE AND WATCHING A LOT OF THE MIGHTY BOOSH.”