Album Review: The Chats - Get Fucked (2022)

Craig Stephen on fair dinkum lucky country battlers, The Chats …

Three middle fingers directed at the camera on the cover. A title with a naughty word. A back cover with a schoolboy-esque penis picture. And the c-word dropped mid-song. Yes, The Chats tick all the boxes of renegade bovver boys/bogan rebels with badly-strung guitars and home-made haircuts.

Yet, I’ve never quite twigged since I discovered The Chats about four years ago as to whether this Brizzy trio are middle class rogues pretending to be from the tougher end of town to annoy their parents (while making money to invest in metals) or genuine working-class ruffians ruffling a few feathers (while making money to invest in beer n cigs). I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. They’re Australian, after all, a land where not giving a damn is the virtual national ideology. And it’s hard to be a Tarquin or a Hugo and be serious with a pudding bowl haircut or a love of souped-up boy racer motors.

Which brings us to the opening track of second album Get Fucked, named after a car, ‘6L GTR’. It’s brief and fast – pretty much like all Chats songs – and eschews a love of the road. Just a shame about all those cars on the road too.

“Pulled in at Beefy’s/ Got a steak and cheese/ Hoonin' down the Bruce now/ As fast as I please/ Late arvo congestion/ Every day’s the same/ So I pulled left around 'em/ And drove up the bike lane.”

 Ah, that wonderful Chats sense of humour, which seemed lost when they lost a guitarist by the name of Josh but brought in another Josh to replace him. It’s still there and in top gear. There’s the tale of a jobsworth ‘Ticket Inspector’ on that eponymous track, a man (presumably) who lives to catch out the larrikins trying to escape his clutches and catch a ride for gratis. “Short fuse, I'm 'boutta lose it/ Got a bit of power, ain't afraid to abuse it.” And you know he certainly will.

On the debut album High Risk Behaviour (2020) they revelled in being lager louts on such songs as ‘Drunk and Disorderly’, and continue the trend on ‘I’ve Been Drunk in Every Pub In Brisbane’. I imagine in a city of 2.4 million people that that would be a considerable achievement. It sounds like a challenge worth taking up.

“I've been legless at the Breakfast/ After a few they told me to leave/ I've been banned at the Grand Central Hotel/ And I've been pissed like you wouldn't believe/ I love relaxin' at the Caxton/ But they never like the look of me/ I've been off my face at the Stock Exchange/ They gave me a couple beers for free.”

‘The Price of Smokes’ meanwhile turns to the art of the ciggie. There’s pretty much two refrains in the entire song – one, the price of smokes is going up again, and secondly, the conclusion that “Those bastards in parliament ought to be hung by their necks.” Other than a lament to poor workplace safety on ‘Dead On Site’, it’s pretty much the only outreach to modern toils and troubles.

Clocking in at about half an hour it’s not going to challenge the concentration-lagging youth among us, but its 13 songs are sharp, pointed and frantic. You get your money’s worth.

In an age of insipid music in which middle class values are to the fore, it’s refreshing to have my ears blasted about alcohol, grunty cars and fighting. You don’t have to empathise with any of that to appreciate that The Chats play it their way: it’s part punk, part old style rock and perhaps even a bit of pub rock too. It’s also very much of a recent Australian trend, in line with similar contemporary bands like Amyl and the Sniffers and Drunk Mums. In an age of mediocrity and blandness in the music scene, that’s pretty much all you can ask for.