Australia’s The Chats are one of the most raucous punk bands around, and they’ve barely cleared the drinking age here in the USA. The classic power trio has been on a massive tour of America, playing shows that they scheduled more than two years prior to celebrate the then-imminent release of their debut album, High Risk Behaviour. Those three words encapsulate concisely what the band’s music is all about: being young, drunk, and getting into trouble. To even call them “vignettes” from working-class life in Australia would be to ascribe a bit more intentionality to it than there really is: they’re kids writing what they know, playing hard and fast, and that’s really all there is to it. And judging by the sold-out crowd in Boston, almost as far from their home of Queensland as they can geographically get, that style has resonated with a legion of people all across both nations and elsewhere. With a through-line of coastal surf- and garage-rock influence as well, The Chats and their catalog of hit-and-run bangers embody a timeless spirit of youthful, impulsive punk.
The last time The Chats were in Boston it was a wild affair as well; kids packed into a club, pressing each other up against the stage. Singer and bassist Eamon Sandwith recalls it fondly during their first pause in the set, and tells the story of how the band found a mystery copy of Tupac’s Makaveli in their van – no idea where it came from – and traded it to someone in the crowd for weed. Sandwith asks if that guy is in the audience, and though some people falsely claim to be him, Eamon spots the genuine article, unsurprisingly quite close to the front of the stage.
It’s been so long since the original date of this show that the band are in the midst of announcing an entirely different album: this one, their sophomore LP, is entitled… Get Fucked, emblazoned on the album cover in big block letters, natch. They released their first single ‘Struck By Lightning’ recently, and at their Boston gig, they’re playing in a weird liminal time when the second single, ‘6L GTR’, is out in Australia but won’t hit America ‘til the stroke of midnight. Written from the perspective of a driver who’s entirely fixated on his car, it bears a slightly-less-chaotic similarity to the final minute of The Dead Milkmen’s ‘Bitchin’ Camaro’. Get Fucked already has a notable presence in the band’s touring setlist, with both of the aforementioned cuts and a third entitled ‘Paid Late’ being shown off ahead of the August release date.
Among the highlights of the evening are a pair of covers – there’s a lightning-quick rendition of KISS’ ‘Rock & Roll All Nite’, and then a less-likely take on a band that is perhaps the diametric opposite of The Chats in terms of content: The Wiggles. (Yes, the children’s band.) But the best parts of the set, of course, are how everyone is reveling in the band’s ridiculous, outsized tales of degenerate antics. There’s tales of moms stealing their kids’ smokes, doing a dine ‘n’ dash, contracting a mosquito-borne disease, and getting your identity stolen trying to buy drugs online. By the time the band’s breakout hit ‘Smoko’, from early EP Get This In Ya!!, rolls around near the end of the evening, there are people crawling their way from the back of the club to the front on the shoulders of their mates and tumbling joyously over the barrier at the feet of both Sandwith and guitarist Josh Hardy. Hardy took over for Josh Price in the interim between albums, seemingly implying a sort of One-Josh Policy in the band’s composition.
The closer for the night is ‘Pub Feed’, the other hit which alongside ‘Smoko’ catapulted The Chats to awareness in the wider world. It’s chiefly a list of pub foods Sandwith and the band enjoy, punctuated by guitar and drum stingers from Hardy and Matt Boggis. But the top comment on the video for the song is: “How many new national anthems do these guys need to write?” The band skirts up against the political occasionally, like ribbing American gun culture in ‘The Kids Need Guns’ or facing classist discrimination for choosing to wear a mullet as Sandwith often does – but their most universal anthems are simply about the tangible, sensory joy of scarfing down fried foods, or not wanting to be disturbed on one’s smoke break. It’s universal, shout-along, riotous fun.
Review and photos by Collin Heroux
