What's it worth? Four bottles if not more.
Melbourne's Burn In Hell has a hell of a rep on the live circuit, both in Australia and overseas: it’s easy to see why. "Monkey Bones" (uhm, 2014) is world-class rock’n’roll which jangles your fillings and fills your jangles.
Cover artist Clem depicts the band in a sort of cartoonish steam-punk (am I allowed to use that hipster word here, Barman?) setting and while in a way this is a correct impression (in the sense that this band have a Euro-retro aspect) it’s also wrong cause the songs lurch outta the blocks like there’s no past or tomorrow, just the misbegotten present.
Every crap reviewer will mention Tom Waits (including me), and while that goes as much for the vocals as the music - I must say there’s a dollop of Dead Boys and classic French burlesque (that’s real burlesque, not just too many chubby folk squeezed into a small frock) and a sprinkling of gin-soaked fairy-dust.
Hell, break out your Liza Minelli scrapbook and give "Monkey Bones" a heavy, hearty, loud listen and you’ll be dragging your beloved around the room in a headlock in no time. There’s horns and pianna and you’re gonna groove in a timely manna…
Four bottles? Yeah, fuck it, four and a half bottles, and a squeeze of the sodden bar-towel.
Now go Burn in Hell.
1/2
