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plastic section

  • plastic section ready cvrReady! – Plastic Section (Outtaspace)

    Self-consciously retro rock and roll bands can be a real problem. There are ones that overplay their hand and fall back on gimmicks. They almost always have a name with “Thee” appended to the front. And then there are those that apply their three chords with genuine regard for where the music emanated.

    Plastic Sectionis part of a loose Melbourne aggregation of bands in the latter category; their peers are The Breadmakers, The Vibrajets and The Cha Cha Chas.Each faithfully plunders the past while applying their own take.

  • twisted plastic section Twisted - Plastic Section (Outtaspace)

    Two salient points need to be made:

    If you're going to tap a source, go back to the original.

    And there ain’t nothing plastic about this Melbourne trio's sound.

    Think Flat Duo Jets, the early White Stripes, Link Wray & The Raymen and BBQ to name a few. While you're at it, you can throw in that catch-all descriptor "Crampsian". In a big way...

  • revenge plastic sectionRevenge – Plastic Section (Chaputa Records)

    If you ask us, “refinement” and “Rock and Roll” make strange bedfellows and Melbourne’s Plastic Section is a case in point. This retro trio is so out of kilter with 99.999 percent of the straight musical world that it hurts. And in a time where music is an ever debased commodity, that is very much a good thing.

    Plastic Section take their lead from rockabilly, rough-edged R&B and ‘50s rock and roll. “Revenge” is their album nomenclature, but reverb is their religion and they worship at the altar of Link Wray.

    It should be no surprise. The band’s lineage is in outfits like The Exotics, Wrong Turn, The Wraylettes, Wet Ones and Girl Monstar. They probably wouldn’t have existed over the course of a couple of albums and an EP in any Australian city other than Melbourne.    

  • Plastic Section Trouble Cd Off The Hip LluisWay back in the last century, there was a band kicking around Sydney called The Milky Bar Kids. They were minimalist rockabilly, stripped back to the bare basics of stand-up bass, twangy guitar and a tiny kit. They had simple songs, in the style of early Elvis, and they were wonderful.

    Fast forward to a bar in Wales a year or two later and I laid eyes (and ears) on a similar band whose name is lost in the mists of time. Again, it was a bunch of people tapping the source of rock’s roots and it was as enjoyable for its raw simplicity as its songs. 

    The international angle is important because the band being reviewed has that sort of history. Vocalist-guitarist Ben Edwards is an ex-Sydneysider based in Melbourne and has another line-up of Plastic Section based in Bangkok.