When a band that calls itself Regurgitator has managed to stay together for 30 years, you can’t really complain when they start cannibalising themselves. That’s just nominative determinism in action. So, a warning: their 11th full-length recording, Invader, may contain traces of their earlier work, especially Unit, their classic album from 1997.
Of course, this being Regurgitator, it’s done with a self-awareness and playfulness that heads off charges that the group are simply repeating themselves. Unit’s final track, Just Another Beautiful Story, contained a synthesised orchestral section that nodded towards the Beatles’ Penny Lane. Tsunami, which closes Invader, similarly quotes Dear Prudence.
A critical and commercial smash at the time, Unit has been so lionised over the years that it has overshadowed a rewarding and adventurous, if occasionally obtuse body of work. While sales may have slowed, Regurgitator still have a large and devoted live following. And most fans, it’s fair to say, like their old stuff better than their new stuff.
But Regurgitator still have more than enough new tricks to keep things interesting. They bring in new faces, too: Peaches makes a cameo on This Is Not A Pop Song (which, like Public Image Ltd’s This Is Not A Love Song, it most assuredly is), while Indigenous author Tyson Yunkaporta and rapper JK-47 make key contributions.
Even Pseudo Echo’s Brian Canham pops up, albeit only in the video for Invader’s lead track Cocaine Runaway. Everything is crammed in here: the clip pays homage to Kenny Loggins in Danger Zone, while the song features the kind of creamy saxophone solo that bedevilled so much of mid-80s pop, immediately followed by a hair-metal guitar break.
It’s a great tune, helped by Quan Yeomans singing better than he ever has. Once prone to mumbling, his voice has matured into a richly textured croon. But Cocaine Runaway is dark: the song’s addled protagonist is on the run, about to dump the body of his girlfriend, in the back seat of his Lamborghini, in the river.
Themes of male violence, colonialism and spiritual emptiness dominate. Again, these are old touchstones for Regurgitator – they were there right from their debut album, Tu-Plang in 1996. But, again, if you stick around for three decades, there is a good chance the times will come to suit you again, and remind everyone else why they liked you in the first place.
Like Midnight Oil on their 2020 album The Makarrata Project, this time around Regurgitator clearly felt uncomfortable speaking on anyone else’s behalf. Yunkaporta delivers The Bastard Poem That Nobody Wanted in the middle of the record. Its final line is devastating in its irony: after Australia is rendered uninhabitable, “somebody remembered how to make a boat.”
But Regurgitator never succumbs to earnestness, nor loses their sense of fun. Bassist Ben Ely, as always, contributes a solid handful of sharp, snappy retorts to Yeomans’ perfect pop and hip-hop pastiches: Australiyeah and Pest are instantly memorable floor-fillers, or should be. (It was Ely who foretold the band’s future with I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff.)
These songs, even throwaways like That’s Not Nermal and Pee Pee Man, balance Yeomans’ more elaborate compositions. He’s in top form here: with no disrespect to Ely, it’s no surprise that This Is Not a Pop Song, Cocaine Runaway and the genuinely epic Epic have all been selected as singles ahead of Invader’s release.
And on the two-minute thrash of Wrong People, Yeomans aligns himself with the outcasts that punk has embraced since the Ramones welcomed Pinheads into the fold. The marginalised and the pariahs, the exiles and the refugees, and the plain weird: these are the people he wants to hang out with because, well, they’re just more interesting.
What Invader lacks is the genuine shock value Regurgitator brought to the charts in their early years: despite their unmatched flair for swearing, even they can’t write a song like I Sucked a Lot Of Cock To Get Where I Am twice. But this is one of their finest albums, easily their best since 2011’s Super Happy Fun Time Friends – and right up there with the old stuff, too.
Invader is out on Friday (ABC Music/Valve). Regurgitator are touring Australia in May and June
