Hungry Ghost

About

Violent Soho wasn’t exactly on the top of the world when they recorded 2013’s <i>Hungry Ghost</i>. After reworking songs from their 2008 debut album <i>We Don’t Belong Here</i> to craft an international calling card in 2010’s <i>Violent Soho</i>—complete with a stint living in America and signed to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label—the Queensland quartet returned to Australia in sore need of a creative and commercial reset. <i>Hungry Ghost</i> turned out to be both, reuniting Violent Soho with their early producer Bryce Moorhead and transforming their fortunes at home after that wobbly stab at overseas stardom. While comparisons to Nirvana and other grunge ambassadors were still unavoidable thanks to the band’s bruising dynamics and singer/guitarist Luke Boerdam’s rasping vocal whine, this album finds Violent Soho more comfortable than ever in their own skin. Opener “Dope Calypso” introduces the album’s balance of honed melodic sharpness and concussive brute force, finishing with two sets of overlapping vocal chants that set the tone for the well-oiled racket to come. The record’s centerpiece arrives fairly early with “Covered in Chrome,” a throttling feat of quiet/loud contrast that includes a memorable ambush in the fan-favorite slogan “hell fuck yeah.” The single eventually went double platinum in Australia and was later rewarded with a No. 4 showing in Triple J’s publicly voted Hottest 100 countdown of the decade’s best songs. Its easy charisma is by no means an anomaly here: “Fur Eyes” sees the band mellowing into glistening guitar jangle and other power-pop signifiers, while “Eightfold” bottles all of the 1990s’ jaded snideness two decades after the fact. This 10th anniversary edition includes the Pixies-esque demo “Follow Me Here” and the contemporaneous tracks “Domestic La La”—also the name of guitarist James Tidswell’s thriving record label—and “Home Haircut.” After following up <i>Hungry Ghost</i> with the sustained successes of 2016’s <i>Waco</i> and 2020’s <i>Everything Is A-OK</i>, Violent Soho announced an indefinite hiatus in 2022. By then their legacy was well assured, with their robust national success leading the charge for noisy young Queensland bands like The Chats, Dune Rats, and Skegss. More than that, they reclaimed grunge and related strains of alt-rock as an appealing (and cathartic) outlet for at least another generation.

via Apple Music