THE SPECIMENS "THE QUICK AND THE DEAF" / "FAST & LOOSE" CD - In the tradition of fellow Australian bands like Rose Tattoo, AC/DC, The Saints, and Radio Birdman, these guys take the Detroit's bluesy, punked-up rock n' roll template and just go to town with it, infusing it with enough swagger to blow the balls off a charging rhino at sixty paces. Collected here are two full-lengths and an EP, all of which are definitely above average for this particular pigeonhole, plus an interview with the band from an Australian radio show. Impressive stuff here, fo' sho'. - JIMMY ALVARADO - RAZORCAKE - Issue #43
THE SPECIMENS "THE QUICK AND THE DEAF/FAST AND LOOSE" CD
Is it just me, or is the fine country of Australia home to a hell of a lot of top shelf rock & rollers? The Saints, Radio Birdman, the Beasts of Bourbon and their many offshoots, the Chevelles, Feedtime, the Drones, Kim Salmon's various projects, You Am I...the list goes on and fuckin' on. Add the Specimens to the roster with this American introductory disk that combines the quartet's two albums, plus an EP. Like an Aussie Joker Five Speed, the Specimens don't fuck around - there's no time wasted on anything but catchy fuzzbomb riffs, runaway train rhythms and spitting sneers. Loaded, Kiss On the Lips and Drama Queen run on the kind of angry/horny fuel powering young men around the world - it spills all over the floor on Burn City Burn, No Good and The Quick and the Deaf, so mind the matches. The disk ends with an Australian interview that teases the group's forthcoming record Jazz Brutus, which sounds like it's gonna be another corker. Bottle-smashing, firestarting, gang deb-fucking rock & roll. - MICHAEL TOLAND - SLEAZEGRINDER.COM
THE SPECIMENS "THE QUICK AND THE DEAF" CD
If the debut album "Fast and Loose", was testimony to what two chords, a big swinging bottom end and a howling Marshall stack could do to dislodge a cubic kilogram of wax from the most stubborn of ears, this follow-up is no less an aural enema. Perhaps a tad less sonically raw but no less powerful, the songs might just be better. It's a near-run thing. As well as far flung outposts like Perth and Brisbane are traveling well in their own eclectic or derivative ways, Melbourne's really become the epicentre of a fragmented Australian music scene. Go out any night of the week and you can catch something worthwhile (as opposed to something best treated with penicillin). The Specimens certainly sit in the former category - a beer-fuelled, eight-legged monster armed with in-the-red guitars and understated but undeniable melodies. The Specimens put me in mind of an early Tumbleweed. Contemporary comprades might be Sweden's Sewergrooves, who similarly marry hi-energy rock 'n' roll to melodic hooks, albeit with a lighter guitar attack. Look to the smoking Specimens track "Levitate" for evidence. The distance between Scandinavia and Melbourne isn't that great these days, and I bet the Swedes would take to The Specimens like bricklayers to beer. There's nothing subtle about The Specimens' songs about sex ("Get on Top"), drugs ("Janie" - surely a cousin of Mary-Jane) and rock and roll (the rest of them) but, then again, why should there be? It's rock and fucking roll, not Beethoven's Fifth. It's a brief album too (36 minutes) but that's more than enough to do the job. A good game is, more often than not, a quick game (Test cricket notwithstanding). There's a lineage of Aussie pub rock going back to the days of Thorpey, The Coloured Balls and the latter-day Masters Apprentices and beyond that's timeless, and from some very ordinary bands are striving to derive inspiration. The Specimens manage to draw from that often-visited well, but come up with a big leaky bucket of something of their own, soaking themselves and everybody around them. Unlike some, however, The Specimens avoid the cliches of endless-guitar-solos-in-search-of-a-song and never descend to mindless boogie. There are enough dynamic variations and occasional extra touches (harp, keyboards) to stop the whole shebang going over the edge and it's assisted by Lindsay Garvina's punchy production that's cleaned up the sound just enough to be palatable for airplay on adventurous radio stations, or even Triple Jay. Too much music today is homogenous: full of sugar, mass-produced and simply no good. It's not too silly an analogy to observe that there's also a less-than-subtle re-positioning campaign underway to make one global fast food chain look deceptively healthy. Fact is, homogenised music and food are both crap - the only difference is that one's a hangover cure (but it's not a patch on a hair of the dog.) If you're serious about your rock and roll, you too should pass on the Big Macs and get a chunk of "The Quick and the Deaf" - it's a real beef burger made in one of those old fashioned corner stores. Extra sauce, anyone? - THE BARMAN
THE SPECIMENS "THE QUICK AND THE DEAF" CD
The Speccies were one of the best things to come out of Melbourne in the early '00s so it was a damn shame when they ran out of steam and disbanded. They may have looked like a bunch of trucker cap rockers in search of a car spare parts swap meet, but their chunky brand of Dog Meat bands-meet-The-Dragons-from-San-Diego contained equal measures of epic wit and high-energy. "Jazz Brutus": was a fantastic note to end on but the preceding two albums, "The Quick And The Deaf" and "Fast 'n' Loose", set that one up. "Jazz Brutus" was a brown acid trip with lashings of hard-edged psychedelia applied. Lovers of the more straight-forward, honest-to-goodness aural back-slam will appreciate what went before. This disc is a re-ish of "The Quick And The Deaf" with "Fast 'n' Loose" appended in full. Rounding out the package is the "Burn City Burn" EP and a 2007 radio interview. A total of 21 tracks makes for a top-value deal. The same comments that appear in the reviews below still apply. This is top-notch Rock Action that never quite broke out of Australia in the profile stakes ('though the Specimens did make it to Europe and were well-received.) The collection underlines how far the Specimens jumped ahead in the production sense as they went along with "The Quick And The Deaf"; played all the way through, "Fast 'n' Loose" suffers markedly in comparison. That shouldn't jar too much - the songs on the earlier album still rock royally. - THE BARMAN
THE SPECIMENS "FAST & LOOSE" CD
Melbourne's Specimens must rock the USA to its bootstraps when they tour there in late 2003, if only to impress upon the Yanks the cultural significance of a lyric like "You're as cunning as a shithouse rat". That's a refrain from "Shithouse Rat", just one of the rough gems you'll strike on the short (32 minutes) but sweet debut album by these St Kilda newcomers. Bottom-of-the-bill for much of their brief career in their hometown, on the strength of this, the Specimens could be headlining with the likes of the Datsuns, Jet, the Casanovas and the D4 before too much longer. The essential elements are there: Lots of guitar, a powerhouse engine room (Brent's feel-laden drumming rules) and catchy, if sometimes not fully realised tunes. Don't know why so many people bag the latest wave of so-called garage discoveries. Just because it's signed to a major label doesn't make it automatically bad. Me, I'm happy someone's taking notice of bands like the Hives and the Datsuns, who at least play the right sort of music (ie. raw rock 'n' roll). It's highly derivative - what isn't? - and some of it's been emasculated in big dollar studios to make it more palatable for boxheaded radio programmers, but the parts you chose to like are a matter of personal taste. Different Strokes for different folks, if that's not too obvious a pun. Hype is a turn-off so don't read it, and don't take it to heart too much when some loser from the English musical press takes a band to their bosom one week only to trash them mercilessly the next. Besides, you can always turn the radio off and listen to a disc like "Fast & Loose". Anyway, the Specimens are too young to have been there in person, but their roots are firmly planted in the mid-'80s scene. That'll piss off the music writer at The Age or the Sydney Morning Herald but it don't faze me none and shouldn't worry you either. No surprise then that "Down on Me" has latter day Lime Spiders written all over it, down to Terry's Draino vocals (lacking only old Mick Blood's patented "let go of my balls" scream). Songs like "Lately", a re-recorded "Burn City Burn" and the runaway train title track are full of energy and punchy dynamism. As they sing on "Burn City Burn": "We like to party long and hard". The Specimens remind me of San Diego's Dragons, with just a touch less swagger and guitar histrionics. Can't give more of a compliment than that. - THE BARMAN
THE SPECIMENS SELF-TITLED CD EP
This new four-piece twin guitar band from the inner city suburbs of Melbourne, claim to be "unashamedly Bogan rock" and as such claim influences from the likes of Radio Birdman, AC-DC, Bored!, Lime Spiders, The Spoilers, etc. Their debut five track CD EP opens with"'No Good" and immediately displays decidedly crafted guitar-based punk/hard rock songs, with strong dynamics and a definite Radio Birdman flavour. "Hole in the Head" is a definite nod to Brisbane's legendary The (Fucken) Leftovers classic "Cigarettes and Alcohol" in the lyric department, which is combined with some scorching lead guitar work that would make The Onyas proud and provides a highlight of the CD EP. Throughout, the guitarwork of Terry Opie and Tim Wold seems to mesh quite seamlessly and the duo of Adam Clarke (bass) and Johnny 8 Ball (drums) provide solid backing, but also take the opportunities where possible to stretch out and highlight the kind of tight but also loose rhythm section they can be. The other highlight of the CD EP would have to be "Burn City Burn" with the band showing yet again a definite grasp of dynamics. A strong debut from these young St. (Sin) Kilda garage rock kids. - SIMON LI