The Go Set - The HungryMile

Sun 26th Mar, 2006 in Music Reviews

The first track, Jig of Slurs on The Go Set’s album The Hungry Mile begins and I start to think I’ve stumbled upon the Riverdance soundtrack. Jig of Slurs consist of just under a minute and a half of bagpipes and drums.  I don’t know my Scottish instruments very well, but I’m assuming the ‘Scottish small pipes and tin whistle’ included on the liner notes are featured on this track as well, all of which are provided by Johnny Rotten McHaggis.

Then we jump to the second track, Bordeaux - cue electric guitar, strong ‘Australian accent’, and a bunch of influences whose sounds range from The Living End, Jebediah and a hint of the high energy punk of Strung Out.  Bordeaux sounds like one of those anthemic ‘punk rock’ songs you’d find on Video Hits in the ‘90s. (Note: You may have noticed I put ‘Australian accent’ in inverted commas.  This is because I’ve never understood the accent attributed to ‘Australian sounding’ artists.  Missy Higgins is a case in point.  Anyway…)

The Go Set was formed in 2003 by J. Keenan (vocals and guitar) and includes Mark Moran (bass), Ben Cuthbert (drums), Andrew Baxter (guitar and mandolin) and Johnny Rotten McHaggis. As I listen to The Hungry Mile, I can’t help but think ‘working Australian man’s record’ in the MOST stereotypical sense of the sentence. I think Cold Chisel. I think drunken yobbos with VB cans in the backyard on Australia Day getting rowdy and busting out a few tunes. 

Many of The Go Set’s songs are directed at the working class – ‘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 class structures hold us like an anchor in our place, once again.’ - and Australians with convict heritage.  There are many Scottish references.

So here is where my problem lies.  I could not identify with this record at all.  I’m not the stereotypical drunken yobbo I mentioned.  And although I’ve grown up as a middle class white kid of Scottish, Irish, Welsh, you name it, descent – I haven’t had to struggle and plead to the union man and the most I really know about convicts is what I learnt in primary school and Year 8 history.  The point I am trying to make here is that I don’t think I fit into the target audience of The Go Set’s music, at least I don’t feel as though I do.

When the lyrics weren’t confusing me (I had to look up the following words in the dictionary – Bordeaux, Salamanca and Meath), they were frustrating me.  When I first picked up the album artwork and skimmed through the lyrics I thought I was reading the diary of a 15-year-old emo.  (Although, to be fair, this could be because the first lyrics I saw were ‘Burn, Burn, the fire in my eyes’ and I couldn’t help but think of The Used, whom I despise.)

The songs Scarlet Snow and Learning Slowly see The Go Set slow down to something quite beautiful.  ‘This song is who I am; it’s sometimes out of key.’  Scots Wha’ Ha’e begins as almost a kind of Scottish version of a Ramones song, with bagpipes in tow.

The Hungry Mile is an onslaught of fast-paced punk rock.  It has a few different elements than your average Australian fast-paced punk rock record.  There’s the aforementioned bagpipes, Scottish small pipes and tin whistle, as well as violin, flute and bodhran – which I’m told by dictionary.com is a ‘hand-held goatskin drum used in traditional Irish music and [is] played with a stick’ (There, add ‘bodhran’ to the list of words I had to look up.)

I’m sure if I come back in another life as someone who fits into the target audience of The Go Set a little more, I’ll be rocking out with the best of ‘em.