The Fauves - When GoodTimes Go Good

Fri 3rd Oct, 2008 in Music Reviews

The Fauves have showed the endurance (if not a more flexible attitude to hairstyles) of Robert Harvey over their musical career – with each entering their twentieth year of playing in 2008. Both the band and the player have fallen perilously short of the elusive high reaches of success in their respective fields during that time. 1997 provided each with very near misses. Harvey’s St Kilda made the AFL grand final only to be beaten by Adelaide and The Fauves were nominated for the Best Alternative Release ARIA award, only to be beaten by Spiderbait. Yet both continue on, doing the dutiful hard yards in their own inimitable fashion.

When Good Times Go Good comes after an eighteen-month lull for The Fauves. The period saw scant activity from the band, except for the rather weighty achievement of their 1000th show. Wayne Connolly earned his fifth Guernsey as producer, while Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie took a seat behind the mixing desk, providing numerous musical flourishes. The music is largely classical pop-infused rock, with lolling melodies stroked along by the odd piano lick, keyboard swirl or occasional hand-clap. But as with any Fauves release, it is the cutting lyrics that capture the most attention. Fight Me I’m 40 features the lines: “When I was your age I had a record deal, send me a text tell me how you feel” and “Style is fleeting, but thought is for life” and even a schoolyard chant of “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Phil Leonard – aka The Doctor – contributes five of the twelve songs for the album. In some ways, the differing songwriting styles give the structure of the album an almost Go-Betweens-esque composition. The Doctor provides the pop and melody-steeped songs along the lines of McLennan, and Andy Cox providing the more sardonic, if somewhat less worldly, wit and personal-life based tales of Forster. Unlike the Go-Be’s, though, the subjects and lyrics tackle somewhat less grand, and more mundane and everyday topics. You couldn’t imagine Robert Forster uttering the line, “I but my clothes in Best and Less” for instance. How We Gonna Live? is a study of the micro-crises of modern adult life asking: “How are we going to live if we have to sell the second car?” and pointing out “The family is at risk, lifestyle is under attack…We’ve got debts and bills and mortgages, life is so unfair.”

The thing about The Fauves is that they really need to be appreciated as a complete package – the recorded output marking only a small portion of the appeal of the band. The Fauves’ official rock – œzine Shred and their website contains some of the most honest and uncompromising (not to mention pants-wettingly funny) accounts of band life. Their live experience is punctuated by almost stream of consciousness-style rants and spirited between-song bluster by frontman Andy Cox that prove equally as memorable as the music. This album will in all eventual likelihood not set the charts nor radio-waves alight, but at least keeps The Fauves home fires burning so we all may bask in it.

The opening track Underwhelmed – a sprightly, falsetto-infused number penned by Cox – was written in response to the lack of any sort of drastic change to happen to Australia with the changing of Government from John Howard to Kevin Rudd. In honesty, this album will most likely have a similarly underwhelming effect on Australia. However, as popular culture and society seem to be careening endlessly toward superficiality and celebrity worship, The Fauves remain grounded as ever, celebrating the failure while savoring life’s small victories, When Good Times Go Good.

When Good Times Go Good is out now on Shock Records.