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.