June 23, 2011

For wee awhile The Go Set were a band that would annually put out a full length studio album and invariably that years release would land within the top 3 of Shite’n’Onions best of year list. The Rising making the cherished #1 spot in 2008. Then things went quite, very quite. So quite that I thought that the band may have departed this mortal world – it didn’t help that the web site was hijacked by a brand of designer jeans (weird eh?). Well, 2011 sees the band back and doing what they do best – playing really frigging raw and loud. Another Round In Melbourne Town is a 19 track, no frills, live album of punk-rock-n-bagpipes, distinctly Australian – old AC/DC, Weddings, Presents, Anything – that will smack you hard about the head and then stomp on your fingers when you try and pick up your teeth from the ground. The best way to hear the Go Set is LOUD and LIVE and since most of us are not in Ozz, this is the next best thing to experiencing ’em in the flesh. Mores the pity.

1. Intro2. MacPherson’s Rant (from Sing a Song of Revolution)

3. North of the 23 (from Rising)

4. Fortune and Gold (from A Journey for a Nation)

5. Bordeaux (from The Hungry Mile)

6. The Miner’s Son (from Rising)

7. The Rising Tide (from A Journey for a Nation)

8. Portland 3:15 (from Rising)

9. 1788 (from Sing a Song of Revolution)

10. The Old Dark Brown (from Sing a Song of Revolution)

11. 5am (from Sing a Song of Revolution)

12. Mainland (The Real McKenzies cover)

13. Fifty Four (from Rising)

14. Away Away (Weddings Parties Anything cover from Sing a Song of Revolution)

15. Union Man (from The Hungry Mile)

16. Power of Youth (from The Hungry Mile)

17. Eastside Burning (from Rising)

18. Roaring Forties (from Rising)

19. Davey (from The Hungry Mile)

20. Wide Open Road (The Triffids cover)

Well its been barely a year since the last album from Melbourne’s hard-working paddy punk-outfit The Go Set, and it was with some excitement indeed that I received “A Journey for a Nation” in the mail. And right from the outset, I was not disappointed – a great cover depicting scenes from a working-class, industrial looking city backdrop with newspaper clippings of strikes and union action – a most appropriate image for a band whose lyrics are always representative of the common man – both today and in the past.

Now where to start…first perhaps a brief note for those unfamiliar with this band. The Go Set are an indie band mixing up the punk genre with a mix of celtic instrumentation (bag pipes, mandolin piano accordion etc.) combined with a political outspoken-ness to match legendary Australian band Midnight Oil.

Singer/songwriter Justin Keenan has delivered in this album another set of clever songs expressing his brilliance as a story-teller commanding vivid imagery and a sense of injustice in the pit of your stomach.

The album is definitely a progression for the band. Lyrically it is probably the strongest and their experimentation on the instrumentation and melody front has increased with every album. Some of the songs on this album could almost be classed as trad-rock rather than trad-punk, but they pull it off with the same sense of urgency and it is a treat for the ears start to finish. The sleeve notes mention that this album was arranged in the studio as part of the recording process, rather than taking life on the stage first and I think you can tell this from the increased complexity of some of the arrangements over perhaps some of the raw energy from the earlier releases – not that there’s any energy lacking in some of these tracks!

The album kicks off with “Fortune and Gold”, a tale of mutiny and murder with pipes and a clever little mandolin counter-melody.
This is followed up with the happy-feeling “The Rising Tide” with very catchy use of piano accordion & violin.
“The New Minority” has great imagery combined with a serious social commentary – a sweet melody with some female vocals that took a bit of getting used to for me – my first introduction to the sounds of the fairer sex on a Go Set album!!!
Next comes “Swings and Roundabouts” – a good ol’ rocking tune – traditional Go Set – can’t go wrong!
And followed up by “Bakery Hill”, possibly my favourite tune off the album after only a few listens – this is truly The Go Set at their best, a bagpipe-driven anthem with some great guitar riffs too.
“Sheppards Town” comes in next, The Go Set really do bring small-town working-class living to life in their songs. This is a great mix of the The Go Set’s traditional sound with some new instrumentation.
“Catching the Sun” follows – a mid-tempo, pretty song – poignant lyrics about life in the slow lane.
“Oceans of Blue” comes in next which is another possible favourite – great imagery, a very clever little guitar riff and overall, just brilliant arrangement.
“A Story to Tell” is a ballad, again conjuring up great imagery mixing up family life with the impossible rock n roll dream of an indie band …
“Welcome to the World” launches us straight back into full on Go Set again- excellent stuff, another political anti-war/environmentalist gem.
Next The Go Set lads perform a cover of Billy Bragg’s “Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards” – a very appropriate song for this band, recognising Bragg’s influence over their style: Mixing pop and politics…and it works well with McHaggis’ pipes and the overall rocking feel.
The album closes out with “Journey of a Thousand Miles” – an epic track at 7 minutes long. First thing that struck me with it was the enlightened rhythm section – just spot on. A very beautiful accordion melody, a few more female vocals and another legendary set of story-telling lyrics from Keenan.

The Go Set have delivered another quality album and yet it isn’t more of the same either…something for new and old fans alike. I can’t wait to see how this all pans out in a live show as they take this album on the road with all the enthusiasm only The Go Set can muster…great work lads!!! I strongly recommend this album, and if you ever get the chance, make sure you get to a live show!

2007

Review – Alex Dean

From the surf coast of Victoria, Australia, The Go Set crank up the pipes and take the fight to the bosses as they relive the past through the people who never got to write the history books.

The Go Set first marched into view, all bagpipes and tattered banners and bandaged heads held high, with 2005’s Sing A Song Of Revolution, an exciting an accessible collection emigrant anthems and mandolin-spiked drinking music. The Hungry Mile sees a continuation of the band exploring the lives of ordinary people across a two hundred year spectrum of time, and how much those lives often have in common. It also examines more detailed and personal themes.

In an era when many bands are lost in an almost glam haze of self conscious dress-ups – mascara, ties, nail polish, sardonic retro, shopping plaza ‘punk’, etc. – The Go Set recall a time when Australian bands weren’t afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves and put their balls on the line. It seems like a very long time ago now, but when bands like Midnight Oil, Spy Vs Spy and Roaring Jack once sang their songs of protest and real lives lived, people listened without banding the word “political” around, as if that in itself conveyed a musical style. The Go Set are coming out of the same realist, impassioned and historically-connected worlds of these bands, an almost-but-not-quite-lost Australia that knew bullshit when it saw it and that could recognize the many crossbreeds of underdog that made up a society without – as is the case now – scrambling over every scrap and shiny thing in a mindless quest to become the over-dog. In this era of bitterly cynical derivation and depressing pop idolatry – all of it the perfect soundtrack for this most materialistic of times – singer songwriter Justin Keenan and The Go Set remind us that some people still work shit jobs, don’t accept the carrots that dangle and dissipate in front of them, don’t vote for right wing corporate warmongers and are more than prepared to say they are nothing short of fucked off with the whole lying, exploitative status quo.

Initially received as a ‘Celtic rock’ or ‘Celtic punk’ band on account of the bagpipe-driven singalongs and chiming mandolin reels and stomps, The Go Set nonetheless live in their own accent and stick to their own guns. As befits the instruments and folk influences, The Go Set have one foot in their sepia-toned history but also one in their own fired-up present; this is not historical re-enactment with a Marshall stack. The band play their trad instruments with a conviction and relevance that transcends any of the novelty value that is sometimes ascribed to some bands. The opening track ‘Jig Of Slur’ is pure whisky and whirling around a tinkers’ campfire and establishes the Goeys’ solid ceilidh credentials. This blends into the pub rock shanty of Bordeaux, a song that typifies the high-spirited but wistful Go Set sound and Keenan’s bare and unaffected singing style. Then straight into the brawny, mandolin-laced immigrant anthem Davey, a story of last drinks before sailing from Ireland to the timber mills of New South Wales. The historical voyage continues with the galley drums and pipe and whistle riffing of ‘Tale of a Convict’, a tribute to the desolation and utter powerlessness of Britain’s convicts in the South Seas. The Transportation era is brought into the present with the rumble of ‘Salamanca’, a rollicking live favourite that reflects on the irony of freedom of speech in modern day Hobart, where earnest dreadlocked lefties agonize over abstract crusades amid the monuments of what was once, after all, a British gulag. ‘All The Truth And Lies’ is a slab of classic eighties crunch rock with a punching drumkit and angry sentiment that brings to mind that other great angry surf band, Midnight Oil.

The pipes kick in again with ‘Union Man’, a straightforward tribute to those countless anonymous souls who feed the engines of our showcase western societies: “We are the underclass and the lucky country holds us dear. Union man, can you save us? We need just a quid a week and a raincoat for this rain. Clocking in but we are never clocking out again.”

The buzzing rock is broken with ‘Hardness Of His Hand’, an acoustic ballad that portrays the plight of a beaten wife and mother, and the tragic, timeless irony of her complex trap. Featuring Mark ‘Squeezebox Wally’ Wallace of Weddings, Parties, Anything fame on piano accordion, the tune does indeed bring to mind the great and much-missed Melbourne institution that WPA was.

Just when you are ready to die inside, though, the boys fire up again with ‘Power Of Youth’, a pure and thrilling fist-raiser that reminds us all of the simple truth that while us little people still have breath in our lungs and revel in our freedom, we cannot truly be downtrodden by the scornful McDomination of our lives and our society.

Then onto the album’s opus, ‘Scarlet Snow’. In this particularly moving number – waltzed along again by Wallace’s accordion – Keenan tackles the subject of World War One and its blood sacrifice with confidence and compassion. Beginning, as so many such stories did, in a country town, the idealistic volunteers become soldiers who are soon swept into the maelstrom of the western front, where “frozen men and metal littered all the field, covered for a moment by the winter’s soft white yield”. A timeless hymn alternating between crashing cymbals and sad fiddle laments, Scarlet Snow nonetheless conveys a sense of hope in its rousing chorus; “Lay down your guns, boys, help the ships pull south across the sea”.

After the sheer scale of Scarlet Snow, we’re back in acoustic mode again with ‘Learning Slowly’. This song sees the narrator reflecting on parenthood as it relates to the self-awareness and acknowledgment of being a human being, ie, flawed;“I drink too much at times, I have been known to fight and I always lose on sure things”. This is one to listen to on your own over a few quite beers on a sunny summer evening.

‘The Longest Holiday’ is another crunchy pop number, and sits in contrast to the following ‘Bombs Falling’ which begins with a bullish diatribe by Australian Prime Minister John Howard, once famously described by left-wing journalist Bob Ellis as having “a voice like a bucket of snot”. A grim punk shout against war, it is also a damning attack on Howard’s priggish and sanctimonious pro-Bush stance.

The last song is the show-closer ‘Scots Wha’ Hae’ – as much Radio Birdman as Robbie Burns – and the album closes with a few rounds of Jig Of Slurs, giving a real sense of performance to the whole show. A live band if there ever was one, The Go Set have done themselves justice with The Hungry Mile. In its humanity and spirited trad roots, it is bound to enjoy a broad appeal. Score: Six beers out of a possible six pack, (plus a whisky chaser!)

2006

Review by Will Swan

I hate the phrase “kick ass” but it’s the only description that fits The Go Set. ‘Sing a Song of Revolution’ not only kicks some serious ass, it kicks butt and arse and whatever they call ass/butt/arse in Australia. Take classic Bon Scott era AC/DC, the celt-ism and social conscience of Roaring Jack and the bagpipe punk fury of The Real McKenzies along with 20 cans of Fosters and you’ll get an idea of what The Go Set sound like. “Sing a Song…”, was recorded two days so it’s raw, loud and powerful. Recommended to those who like their guitars turned to 11 and the bagpipes turned to 12.

July 2004