Album Review: Beat Rhythm Fashion - Critical Mass (2024)

When Beat Rhythm Fashion returned after a 35-plus-year hiatus in early 2019 with a tour and a new album (Tenterhook, reviewed here) it felt like it would be a one-off. A chance for key protagonist Nino Birch to get some stuff off his chest. A belated swansong of sorts, and closure for a band that never really drew a definitive line under its former life as one of Wellington’s original post-punk pioneers.

An early/mid-1980s move to Australia, followed by the death of Nino’s brother and band mate Dan Birch in 2011, plus, I imagine, a host of other key sliding door moments along the way, meant the music of BRF, and that of Nino Birch specifically, was in danger of becoming little more than a distant memory for fans of the band’s earliest incarnation.

An inspired 2007 Failsafe Records compilation of early singles and other recordings, Bring Real Freedom, sought to remedy that, and it worked as a welcome reminder of the band’s early material. Underlining what might have been had choices and circumstances taken the brothers down a different path. It certainly stands as a great legacy document for that first phase of BRF’s existence.

 Another half decade on from Tenterhook, Birch and co-conspirator Rob Mayes have returned with Critical Mass, an eleven-track album release which expands on some of the themes explored on the “comeback” album, while also seamlessly merging the personal with the political.

One of the things I took from the band’s live performance at Meow in Wellington in 2019 (see here) in the immediate wake of the Christchurch terror attack - which had occurred a day prior - was a sense that Birch is a man who cares deeply about the world. A thinker, and someone who isn’t shy about asking hard questions. Almost every track on Critical Mass offers a lyric or line which seeks to provoke or prompt an alternative view of the world. Which is never really a bad thing.

And certainly, the intervening years between Tenterhook’s release and the slow burn evolution of Critical Mass have not been found wanting for source material: a marked worldwide political swing to the right, horrific wars - at least two of which border on mass genocide - and of course, there’s been that global pandemic thing.

Beat Rhythm Fashion offer takes on all of these things, and more, and it’s impossible to fully absorb Critical Mass without being prompted to think a little bit outside the box. Even if it’s just for a fleeting moment, that might be enough.

Musically the album is polished listen. Despite the logistical issues Birch and Mayes would have faced living in different countries, with Birch based in Australia and Mayes in Japan, sending lyrics, ideas, and musical stems back and forth in order to pull everything together. Something they’ve achieved with aplomb.

Naturally it has the same post-punk feel the band has always been associated with, but as with Tenterhook, it’s a much fuller sound than that really early stuff. Birch’s voice has aged well, and I’d contend that Critical Mass contains some of his strongest, most nuanced vocal work.

There’s a lot to love about where Beat Rhythm Fashion finds itself in 2024. I only hope there’s more to come …

Best tracks: I can’t go past ‘Asylum’, one of the softer mid-album tracks, as my favourite. There’s just something about that track which resonates strongly with me. Not only the delicate tensions within the music itself, but its lyrical content, and the wider resignation that “this is not my world” and we can’t just “make it go away” … plus, the pre-release single ‘No Wonder’, ‘Remote Science’, ‘Atonement’, and the closer ‘Doubt Benefit’.

But look, it feels churlish to single out specific tracks, and the whole album is solid. Critical Mass is one of those rare local (well, local-ish) releases that just gets stronger with each and every listen. An album, perhaps, that may require multiple listens before all of its subtle charms are fully exposed.

You can buy Critical Mass here.

The Return of Beat Rhythm Fashion

For me, Beat Rhythm Fashion were always one of the great lost New Zealand bands. Indeed, one of the great lost Wellington bands. A near mythical band I’d seen on Radio With Pictures back in the distant sepia-tinged days of 1981 or 1982. A band I was unable to witness live and up close, simply because I was too young. By the time I was of an age to start attending gigs, they’d long since disappeared. Over before they really got started. But I loved what I’d seen and heard, and over the past couple of decades I’ve regularly sought out YouTube clips of the band’s precious early singles, 'Beings Rest Finally', and 'Turn of the Century'. What I never expected to happen was that in 2019 there would be a new album, Tenterhook, or that I’d finally get the chance to see Beat Rhythm Fashion perform. Albeit a version of the band without founding member Dan Birch, who died in 2011.

Dan & Nino Birch, photo: Charles Jameson

That gig is at Wellington’s Meow, this coming Saturday night, and it will feature original guitarist/vocalist Nino Birch (Dan’s brother), well-travelled drummer Caroline Easther, whose connection with Birch and BRF extends all the way back to 1981, and Failsafe Records’ main man Rob Mayes, who produced Tenterhook. It is, to some extent, a bucket list event for me, and for the past few weeks I’ve had Beat Rhythm Fashion’s music on high rotation. Ahead of the gig, I want to share a few interesting/related links for the curious (see footer), and to record a few thoughts about each of the band’s albums - not comprehensive reviews - just a few notes on each.

Bring Real Freedom (2007) 

One of the reasons I refer to Beat Rhythm Fashion as one of this country’s “great lost bands” is because for some 25 years its only material legacy was three early singles, and no accompanying album. Failsafe Records put this right with the release of this 2007 compilation, which included those singles, the related B-sides, and a selection of live tracks from that same early period. It’s essentially the album we didn’t get at the time. The first two singles, ‘Beings Rest Finally’ and ‘Turn of the Century’ are obvious stand-outs, as are ‘Welfare State Rent’, ‘Song of the Hairless Ape’, ‘Art and Duty’, and ‘No Great Oaks’, although it remains something of a mystery to me all these years later which of the latter pair was the actual third single. I’d always thought it was ‘Art and Duty’ but I note that the band’s “Discogs” page lists ‘No Great Oaks’ as the A-side, not the flip. There’s also an early version of the current (2019, digital only) single ‘Hard as Hell’. Bring Real Freedom’s live material, recorded by Chris Cullinane, restored by Rob Mayes, scrubbed up very well, and was a long overdue bonus for those fans seeking a more expansive set than anything offered at the time. The belated album served to document the band’s pioneering post-punk roots and strong early-Cure influences, and given the overall strength of this work, I’m left to ponder what might have been had Dan Birch not made the decision to relocate to Australia in 1982. A move that ultimately meant the end of Beat Rhythm Fashion, or at least, what might become known as “phase one” of Beat Rhythm Fashion.

Tenterhook (2019) 

If there is a “phase two”, or to be a prolonged phase two - and Nino Birch has suggested there’s more to come - then Tenterhook is a great way to kick things off. There’s a lot to like here, and lost brother Dan’s influence remains omnipresent, with four co-writing credits on some the older material featured - ‘Hard as Hell’, ‘Freezing Mr Precedent’, ‘Optimism’, and ‘Property’ - plus there’s a Dan Birch original (from 1993) in the form of the excellent ‘Nothing Damaged’. More than that though, Nino Birch’s own songwriting on Tenterhook’s newer material is exceptional, and there’s a sense of genuine progression here, with an expansion beyond the band’s original palate to include more pop-styled hooks and a much fuller sound. I wouldn’t go so far as to say any of it is particularly uplifting, but it does feel less gloomy, less generic, and perhaps more personal than the circa 1980-1982 stuff. Particularly on the track ‘Dan’, where Nino Birch attempts to offer some context around his brother’s death, with that tune’s lyrics resonating most, to remain firmly stuck in my head long after the track has finished. Credit must go to the work of Easther and Mayes too. In fact, perhaps the biggest triumph of all, on an album full of them, is the fragmented way Tenterhook was pieced together, with the three core constituent parts - resident in Australia, Japan, and New Zealand - somehow managing to produce an immaculate fully formed whole. 

Sample lyrics from ‘Dan’ … 

“You were never at home, so you got wild with all your drinking
Your common pathways were lost in the acute darkness of your thinking
And your friends watched you leave from the tyranny of distance
But you never achieved from this path of least resistance

Oh your mind, twist and turned
As your soul crashed and burned
You were never up for this ride
So what the hell were you thinking
Damn it Dan, Damn it Dan!”

Some great links if you’re keen to learn more about Beat Rhythm Fashion, both past and present: 

Andrew Schmidt’s Audioculture profile from 2013

Radio New Zealand’s interview on the second coming (broadcast last week)

Gary Steel’s recently published Q&A with Nino Birch. A prolific writer about the Wellington 1980s post-punk scene, Steel was there for the first incarnation of the band

Beat Rhythm Fashion on Bandcamp