The story is that Melbourne Bitter is the same beer as VB, but taken from the bottom of the keg. That might explain the subtle difference in taste between the two domestic beers, but it doesn’t explain why Melbourne tends to taste better when presented in an aluminium can, nor the surely erroneous inference that VB is the cream of the CUB brewing stable.
And it doesn’t explain just why Melbourne Cans’ debut album, Moonlight Malaise, is so compelling. Take the dark and mysterious Wolves of the Diner Mile: bleak and disconcerting, psychedelic and explorative, it’s a journey that drags you in, plays with your fragile senses and leaves you richer for the experience. But then there’s Drowned Rats, the perfect pop anthem for a summer’s day on the banks of Merri Creek with a slab of beer and a packet of salt and vinegar chips.
Then you can ponder Boys, and wonder if it’s celebrating, lamenting or purging the infantile emotional state of the male of the species; Prom Night starts where Television left off almost 40 years ago, and saunters elegantly to the edge of a David Lynch movie.
Thumb a Ride isn’t all that it seems, and a lot more; are we heading to the shadowy side of the Go-Betweens’ legacy? And is Fallen Angel back to that Lynchian suburban dystopia where evil lies just beneath the facade of happiness?
Battlesnakes is The Triffids incarnate; Final Flight is wondrous, slightly frenzied and memorable in the way that any late night at a festering local pub should be. Hot in the Head prises open a door of a Coburg sharehouse and finds the ghost of Morricone; and is Don’t Tell Her a love song or a warning? And does it even matter when you’re spellbound by its tender delivery?
Melbourne Cans are so far from dregs it’s not funny. In fact, if Moonlight Malaise is anything to go by, these guys will be rising to the surface quicker than the froth from a can of bitter shot-gunned in a moment of Saturday night adolescent excitement.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Drowned Rats
If You Like These, You’ll Like This:GO BETWEENS, THE TRIFFIDS, WITCH HATS
In A Word: Mysterious
