SONIC BUSINESS LTD: only built 4 canberra linx… PART I: petre out & the tyreslashers // No Stars

Preface

The Sonic Business Ltd writing office asks themselves: Why write about local music? Especially if you’re going to do it poorly? Fk, idk.

Consciousness expanding? More like consciousness contracting. All music from everywhere is available to us at all times. How do we decide what to listen to? About ten years ago I decided to change the way I listen to music by confining my choices geographically to my new home – Canberra. And it was blogs and reviews and posts and the wayback machine that changed the way I perceived this city and its music. Writing by Peter K and Cody Atkinson and Doug Wallen and BMA and stuff on Collapse Board and Polaroids of Androids and Weirdo Wasteland. The way the first chapters of ‘Anna Karenina’ describe a delicate grey morning can forever change how you perceive overcast weather. Some reading and a few Greg Araki films will change the way you hear Assassins 88. This is really just a self-serving project to fit my thoughts and experiences and feelings and memories into a coherent structure. And to fill the time void the closure of sideway has left me. Whether this kind of writing will achieve anything is highly unlikely. I am not a writer. I do not know much about music and art. I’m a pretender. But the world belongs only to the fearless and I’ve got a will to powertrash.

The show

petre out & the tyre slashers play at Smith’s Alternative on Sunday 30 June 2024 with Lulu & The Tantrums and Stamp. Doors at 7:00pm. See you there. Tickets available here.

petre out & the tyreslashers

petre out & the tyreslashers are a “garage pop band from Canberra inspired by Daniel Johnston, the Lemonheads, Townes Van Zandt, The Lucksmiths and a million zines”. Led by Canberra punk and counterculture statesman petre out aka Pete Huet. One of many that inspired me to waste my time writing about Canberra bands. Pete Huet was in long serving Canberra ‘slacker’ indie rock band Waterford. They put out some great LP’s and wrote catchy Teenage Fanclub style tunes. Definitely worth checking out.

There are many facets to Pete Huet. He’s one of those heads with an encyclopaedic knowledge of music and a million stories to tell. He is really the only person that could explain the multitudes of petre out & the tyreslashers so I beg for forgiveness. He’s a long time instigator of cool shit in Canberra including concept bands like Plush Style, a bunch of zines, and even patch reviews. He’s also one of the only reasons to use Facebook anymore where he shares funny anecdotes, jokes and stories from his life (add him!) and his Instagram is great too. Issues of his zine ‘To Here From Naivety’ aren’t really available anymore. You can probably get issues of ‘Hoop Delusions’ if you ask him. But some copies of ‘Better Things To Do: The early history of Canberra straight edge’ will be available at the show on Sunday. And he promised to hold the last copy of the ‘Peter K Zine’ for me. I suggested he go the Distort route and sell the PDF versions.

The backing tyreslashers have been many. The current make up of the band is Peter K on drums and Tim on bass. The former lead guitarist and all around loveable community man Ryland Newstead of Ryland Newstead & The MCG’s and The Canberra Sub-committee To Keep Music Evil {The Australian Brian Jonestown Massacre Show} has just moved to London to start a brand new life. The rumour going around was that the new guitarist replacing Ryland was another guy named ‘Peter’ which I assume was the only requirement. The new ‘Peter’ writes KOMMOTION – an ‘Aussie sixties garage-beat zine’ about Australian rock n roll history but he dropped out of the band because he thought he didn’t have the chops for lead guitar.

Pete Huet is literate and literary but without pretension. He’s self aware and self deprecating. One of my favourite things about petre out & the tyreslashers is the irony that clearly Pete Huet loves dolewave bands and the bands that inspired that sound (Go-Betweens, The Clean, Flying Nun bands, Television Personalites and so on) and his work as petre out fits right into that sound and attitude. But so much of the songs are about working life in the offices of the Australian Public Service. I can imagine Pete Huet’s version of Gustave Courbet’s epic ‘The Stone Breakers’ being a tiny, tiny painting of a young grad and an elderly, un-fireable APS leech standing around a photocopier with gentrified takeaway coffees in hand. That’s why the antithetical and oxymoronic genre label ‘office punk’ fits so well. As someone that has never actually been on the dole, I dig it.

I used to whinge about dolewave bands like Dick Diver and Twerps and The Ocean Party and Scott & Charlene’s Wedding and The Stevens. They always struck me as so stereotypically Melbourne (derogatory). Their slacker-whimsy and literary references felt like rich kids romanticising slumming it in their sharehouses trying to make it as an artiste – an option often reserved for those with a safety net. But I know the generalisation is probably unfair and untrue. I preferred the grind of Sydney bands like Royal Headache and Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys and RIP Society and Black Wire or even Brisbane’s Bedroom Suck. But I came around eventually and these dolewave bands are some of my favourite bands of all time. I am a hater a heart but a lover of good songwriting.

‘petre out EP’

petre out’s self-titled EP was released on 4 March 2017.

petre out EP by petre out

Four tracks of clever, witty, playful, and relatable songwriting where sweet melodies and acoustic guitar strumming are in abundance. Dealing with thoughts and feelings about aging, faith, drugs, depression, fear, books, and friendship.

Opener ‘Steak Knife Tuesday’ is a simple solo acoustic song “about being bad at drugs” and laments the agony and the XTC of party life as we age. We pray for an interventionist gawd’s protection as desires to get wasted on a Friday afternoon at the photocopier lead to Friday night’s six Coronas and three and a half pills leads to mid-week hangover hell leads to Friday afternoon again and on and on forever.

The Kurt Vonnegut referencing ‘Still and All, Why Bother?’ is just acoustic guitar and bass under lyrically dense pondering about finally feeling ‘ok’. Pete Huet is pretty wise. He’s lived through the trials and tribulations of a depressed and anxious life. But he finds the strength to go on and marks here the philosophies and questions that underpin his willingness to not only remain alive but to play shows and and write zines and keep doing stuff he thinks is cool.

‘Blue to Grey’ is about hitting rock bottom and starting to come out the other side. It’s petre out at his most ‘New Start Again’. There’s an “it’s time to start again” refrain and avoiding someone you know at the IGA you don’t really want to see or speak to right now just like in Dick Diver’s classic ‘Two Year Lease’.

‘The Book You Lent To Me’ is a short and funny ditty about borrowing books from friends and never finishing them. I’ve got a few books I borrowed but never finished including Nabokov’s ‘Pale Fire’ from Dede and Cat and Robert Forster’s ‘Grant & I – Inside and Outside The Go-Betweens’ from Stefan. Reading them was eating into my scrolling time.

petre out & the tyreslashers singles

petre out & the tyreslashers have two other singles. ‘Another Morning in the Penny Black’ paints vignettes of Pete Huet’s life and the characters in it when he lived in the backpackers above the Penny Black in Edinburgh.

Another Morning in the Penny Black by petre out & the tyreslashers

‘ENDO’ is about courage. When he was young his friends had it but Pete Huet never did. Of course the introspective and well-read Pete Huet points to lofty and philosophical reasons for his fear, he doesn’t believe in an afterlife so why would he risk the only one he has by hanging out of a car window at high speed? Pete Huet has tried to explain what an ‘endo’ is at his shows but I’m still not sure. I think it’s an alley-oop backflip dive into a swimming pool. When I was a kid and ‘endo’ was a nose stall on a bike. Generational or geographic differences, I guess.

ENDO by petre out

Pete’s got heaps of other songs and bangers like ‘Ken Kesey Holiday’ are yet to be released online.

Petre Huet has a very flat affect. I don’t know how old he is but I think he was born in the late ‘70s. He is so Gen X and so 90s. Think Mike Judge and Palahniuk and BEE. I assume ‘Office Space’ was his favourite movie at one point in his life but it actually might secretly be ‘Fight Club’ (but I’m sure he wouldn’t talk about it). Pete Huet has a couple of kids and one of which is an an huge ball of energy, charisma, and confidence. Must get it from their mother or Pete’s verve just got channelled outward instead of inward.

petre out & the tyreslashers ‘Zines and Bands’ shows

I’m ashamed to admit I only saw petre out & the tyreslashers for the first time in January 2023 at Smith’s Alternative when they played the ‘Zines and Bands’ show presented by the Sticky Institute and Small Zine Volcano with an actually amazing experimental Melbourne trio called The Secret Migraines and hair metal acapella group Made in Austria (yes, they are real). The show was fun. I went by myself. I perused the zines but was too shy to talk to anyone. These three bands played together again at Smith’s in September 2023 and it was just as good.

petre out & the tyreslashers at Cody and Megan’s wedding

One of my favourite petre out shows was at Cody and Megan’s wedding at the Hall hall earlier this year. In true wedding band fashion, they played a heap of covers including Dick Diver’s ‘Alice’, Royal Headache’s ‘Carolina’, Scott and Charlene’s Wedding’s ‘It Don’t Bother Me’, and Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s ‘Wrapped Up’. Each tyreslasher took turns singing these songs. Bassist Tim sang ‘Wrapped Up’ and prefaced it by saying that in the early days of dating his then-girlfriend-now-wife that ‘Wrapped Up’ was one of the songs she’d given to him on a mixtape. Now that is real romance.

I could listen that riff for days and days on end and just go around and around repeating that phrase with the drawn out ‘iiiiiiim’ and the short one-two punch ‘in you’. So could plenty of other people. Just listen to the crowd singing at this ECSR show:

The tyreslashers ended their set on a beautiful version of Daniel Johnston’s ‘True Love Will Find You In The End’. Each band member sang a verse before they all sang the final go round in unison. Solemn, entrancing, hypnotic. Jon and I got lost in the beauty of this timeless love song, the celebration of love, and the sadness of Daniel Johnston’s passing.

It’s strange that Canberra has three of the best ever covers of this song in the world. Assassins 88’s ‘Go Go Second Chance’ version and also their new one with Robin aka Bobby Kill aka TV Colours on guitar which debuted at the Assassins reunion show at sideway in September 2023. The accompanying music video is a stroll down memory lane for Assassins and their fans. So damn good.

No Stars

The petre out EP Launch was at Smith’s Alternative on Saturday 4 March 2017 with No Stars, Zoe Erskine, and Cult Click.

No Stars was Gemma Nourse’s (Sylvia, Earache, Shop Girl) solo project (turned duo when joined by David Fenderson before Earache). I thought the name ‘No Stars’ came from this song in ‘Twin Peaks – The Return’ written by David Lynch, Rebekah Del Rio, and John Neff.

It’s funny that Canberra bands from that era were so in on Lynch. Assassins 88’s ‘Go Go Second Chance Virgin’ original cassette had Laura Palmer on the cover. TV Colours’ classic LP ‘Purple Skies Toxic River’ is has Lynchian influence all over the sound and story.

The leafy suburbs of the bush capital make it one of the most liveable cities in the world but I guess it’s easy to make the creative link to Lynch’s interest in the sinister evils that exist just beneath the surface of quaint, idyllic suburbia and small towns. Murder and violence and rape and power and corruption and lies and the supernatural are right here in Canberra. Though the middle class lives of the artists that are inspired by these ideas are probably quite distant from these realities. There’s also the ways in which Sydney and Melbourne are Canberra’s ‘Hollywood’ – the cities Canberrans migrate to in order become (no) stars. And there’s Lynch’s affinity for dream pop and synthesisers, too.

It turns out the name actually came from a ‘no stars’ review for Kasha by someone at The RiotACT. Very based.

No Stars – ‘graveyard’

The video below is No Stars’ final song from Gemma’s set at that petre out EP launch back in 2017. Filmed by legendary Canberra music documentarian Pat Cox aka twohandsandonlyonemouth. It’s called ‘graveyard’ and is the closing track on the ‘no stars EP’.

This video alone can explain the pains in my heart caused by the simple fact that Canberra music has fallen off a cliff with little strength to climb back up. No Stars never reached the popularity of TV Colours nor Danger Beach nor Wives nor California Girls. But this is beauty. This is truth. This is romance. This is simple lyric and melody striking at the heart with great force. This is the sweet, shaky voice within all of us. These are the heights this city can reach. I’ve watched it over and over all afternoon. Maybe I was in a weird mood but I even cried.

Tears of sadness for what’s lost, wishing I could have been there, wanting to go back, and for the ways Sydney and Melbourne pull Canberra apart. For knowing deep down that I am a talentless hack and I will never write a song as romantic nor as heart wrenching.

Tears of joy for this city and it’s music and it’s people. For the internet. For YouTube. For Pat Cox and his camera. For Gemma. For petre out. For fates aligned that altered my life with this video – this beautiful performance of this beautiful song. If I had enough $$ to get married, I could walk down the aisle to the audio from this video.

ACT ONE
SCENE 444
Smith’s Alternative, Canberra. Night.
a low synth pad, a sample of an acoustic guitar strumming, and a five note falling melody – as if falling into a grave, crowd chatter, glasses clinking.
GEMMA This is a karaoke song for me
It’s like Jonny Telafone if anyone’s ever seen him
CROWD MEMBER Yes
GEMMA Haha
NO STARS I’ve been waiting for you the longest time
I’ve been waiting for you the longest time
And I’m trying
so hard
But can’t you see?
I’m
A graveyard
a lead synth starts a sweet, falling melody. like angels’ steps to where you lay, preparing to take you to the heavens.
NO STARS Please believe me when I say
That I will never go away
That I could never go away
I’m
A bone field
I’m
I’m
I’m
I’m
GEMMA Thank you so much for having me
crowd *applause*

Another video from that show:

Sorry for the sincerity. But I’ve got a will to powertrash. Put down your phone. Go now and try to write songs as good as these! Gawd wills it.

Pete Huet and Gemma Nourse if you’re reading this let’s set up an interview!

Next time in only built 4 canberra linx… PART II: More on No Stars // Sylvia // ‘EP II’ // Earache// Gemma Nourse // David Fenderson // shoegaze vs nu-gaze // Our Carlson // The UV Race // Tanswell’s, Beechworth // ++more

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