(Sire)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
It seems that when the Saints are remembered at all in punk culture outside of Australia these days, it's merely as fire-breathing originators (arguably) of the archetypal Punk Cover Version of luminous classics like "River Deep Mountain High" and "Lipstick on Your Collar," both included as bonus tracks on modern CD issues of their debut album. To remember the Brisbane outfit as a novelty act, as punk marginalia, does them a great injustice indeed, but with equal disrespect typically afforded fellow pioneers the Damned, it's hardly surprising. The broad narrative of punk rock, it seems, can only find room for three bands: the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash.
The Saints weren't as brilliant or as politically conscious as the Clash, granted, or as convincingly angry as the Pistols; and their appallingly early origin -- they formed and were playing essentially the type of music that would forever be defined as punk rock in 1974 -- doesn't dissipate credit that rightly belongs to the Ramones for singlehandedly inventing their craft. Much as the revolutionary flavor of the Ramones reveals a lot about the time in which they came to be, a time in which straight-ahead rock & roll was an abnormality, the Saints' virtual cofounding of the official punk rubric is quaint in the sense that their work hardly displays the threadbare purism or outlandishness that would quickly become associated with the genre. Indeed, what is special about the Saints -- and what survives about them -- is that they are not a confrontation, not even really a challenge. They are a powerful Stones-like rock band swept invisibly under the punk rug -- their songs full of muscle, rhythm guitar propulsion, and natural, emotive rock attitude.
This isn't to say that they're an ordinary band, just that it's become less and less useful to describe them in terms of their punk rock significance, the same way it doesn't hurt the Only Ones to declare them more power pop than punk outfit. And whereas the Ramones and the Clash sounded at times like displaced bands of the late '50s, the Saints seem propelled from a less distant period, mid-'60s England just when it was OK to be serious but before the folkies and druggies took over.
There is, honestly, one stone-cold punk classic here, even if it sounds as at home amongst the Jam, Nick Lowe, and the New York Dolls as with its closer brethren. "(I'm) Stranded" is a quite gleeful, grand anthem when you think about it, very reminiscent of Lowe's "Heart of the City" and drawing a straight line from garage or frat rock of the mid-'60s, which indeed gave rise to the "punk rock" term to begin with. The hook is to die for in the perfect "Wooly Bully" "Louie Louie" fashion but with, naturally, just a touch of wit and presence those songs lacked.
At first, it seems like the album of the same name can offer nothing to match the instant infection of that single. "One Way Street" and "Wild About You" are relatively low-key rock, the former firmly in Stones/Who territory, the latter toying with more guitar faux-heroics than most punks would allow and brushing with hard rock and metal.
But after that, the big Mick and Keith move comes, and the result completely turns everything around on this album, this band, this decade. "Sometimes you get that old lost feeling," it goes, "sometimes it hits you when you're feeling down." Yeah. "Messin' with the Kid" is a ballad of enough skill, on-point feeling, and shadily reflective, triumphant hooks -- completely, gorgeously drenched in guitar -- that it could rightfully make a claim as being punk's first masterpiece if it constituted punk in any real way. Not to discount anything those other bands did; fuck, the Clash is still one of the finest groups of men ever to do anything together in my opinion. But "Messin'" is nothing short of a classic rock ballad, perfectly wrought and executed as well as anyone ever has from the '50s on. It's not an exaggeration to state that it could be on Let It Bleed. And don't tell the punks, but the thing runs six goddamn minutes, all of them tremendous. It has the feel of an immediate touchstone, written by lightning and miraculously discovered somewhere in Queensland.
Once you've heard that, it becomes extremely difficult not to pay careful attention to what the Saints are doing. Writer and singer Chris Bailey is a maverick, unafraid of expression and exuding utter confidence for the full scope of the rest of the LP. Guitarist Ed Kuepper wouldn't be an ill fit for a stadium group. The band's rhythm section (bassist Kym Bradshaw at this point, and drummer Ivor Hay) is too adept and excitable to ever join the ranks of any one-chord wonders, and the songs give them plenty to do. "Erotic Neurotic," which delightfully quotes "I Wanna Be Your Man" (and accidentally, Dylan's "I Wanna Be Your Lover"), returns to punk and amazingly manages not to feel like a letdown after the stare-at-the-sun of "Messin' with the Kid." The second half opens with more classicist Ed Kuepper riffage, loud and fast but more garage rock than punk rock, on the irresistible "No Time," and the irreverent Elvis Presley cover "Kissin' Cousins," probably the best in their novelty repertoire. Yet again, though, the midtempo is where the Saints truly reign.
"Story of Love," which sounds uncannily like a certain song about teen spirit recorded fourteen years in the future, is a varied, oddly structured Beggars Banquet-like stomper featuring the kind of levity for which Bailey deserves greater fame, and a brilliantly timed Kuepper solo that gives reason to think of the Saints as more in line with Big Star than the Damned. This is two steps away from radio pop, ingeniously so, but the world was different then. Even a surface punker like "Demolition Girl" has trickier riffage and more playful, ambiguous humanity than Malcolm MacLaren would've ever allowed, and another New York Dolls chorus. It's hard to find a band threatening when they're so likable, in the end, but that's the thing; they don't need to be a threat, they're just good.
(I'm) Stranded ends much as it began -- with a loud, fast, vaguely dissatisfied banger, "Night in Venice," the oddity being that it rails off into a guitar and feedback tangent and extends to 5:41, forecasting Television and Yo La Tengo -- but the implications it leaves today in its mere half hour are enticing. It makes sense that a band spawned in 1974 would give a sort of missing link between the Velvet Underground, whose garage persuasions calculatedly masked a high (contextual) skill level and adherence to songs, and the Ramones, who learned what they were doing as they went. But what's so intriguing about the Saints is that they don't seem to have had anything to prove; they have no issue with displaying their chops (a big no-no in the punkiverse) and see no suspicious element to just banging out their songs as best they can, whether they're simple or ornately emotional or even instrumentally complex. They aren't interested in being part of a movement, in making impressions or force-feeding primitivist ideals. Does that make them less rebellious than their peers... or less conformist?
Fuck the intellectual breakdown, though; if you want to hear a great rock band playing great rock songs you've probably not heard before, get this shit now. It's worth blasting. A punk collection might seem complete without "Messin' with the Kid," but it sure would be missing a lot of soul.