The first week of January 2020 saw Glenn Richards, on crutches due to a Christmas party cricketing incident, in a Melbourne studio with his Augie March bandmates putting down eleven new tracks for what might end up being the sequel to their acclaimed 2000 debut album Sunset Studies. The plan was for Glenn to complete it at home in Hobart and have it released in time for the band’s 20th anniversary of SS, a tour already booked in major theatres throughout the country. For a couple of months that plan was looking rosy, but we all know the rest. It played out similarly for most people, big plans or not. So, after a stiff coffee, he started on the journey that would lead to a fully self made album, two film clips, and a complete set of lyric clips. Cottage industry indeed.
“FIBATTY!” is a full blooded album, possibly even more ambitious in its instrumentation and thematic reach than your average Augie record, and very far from a typical solo album by a sensitive bloke with an acoustic guitar. While it never stops at any station too long it is maybe best described as a deep, crooked pop album, something that would fit nicely on a playlist with the likes of Split Enz, The Kinks, Deerhunter, Guided By Voices, Richard Davies, The Go Betweens, XTC, Jellyfish, Richard Dawson, or any number of acts past and present who prize vision, quality, humour, genuine feeling and individuality as marks of good music. But above all it is a Glenn Richards album, DIY ground to sky, and hopefully one of many to be released in this fashion. It is also very much a pandemic album, hopefully his only one.
From Glenn : “Well, today’s the day I release my 2020 solo album “FIBATTY!”. The stock has arrived and the online version is now live to order. Along with the album launch I’m pushing out another single and video, “Alive (Until You’re Not)”. There’s little to be gained at this stage waxing about the strange year we’ve all probably had but I made this record for a number of reasons, chief among them being as a way to process the shift in things and the plain awfulness of a few events closer to home that happened to land in the middle of it. At the same time I tried to make something that would be enjoyable to listen to whether superficially, forensically or anywhere between. It has hooks, humour, depth, polish and grime, and as much as is possible in a short album it contains traces of so many of my influences from the proponents of raw four track wizardry to the maestros of the most audacious studio trickery. In the end though it’s just me in my glorified shed in a backyard, isolation within isolation, hopefully a work of some fellowship and joy. I’ll be releasing a track a day with an accompanying lyric video for the next several days for edification purposes.”
The excellent folks at Heart of the Rat Records have seen fit to release my recent solo album on vinyl, which I’m pretty chuffed about. Mastered by the always spot on Joe Carra at Crystal, the tunes shine on the black stuff. Check it and all the other great releases at HOTR. The “FIBATTY!” LP stock is expected to arrive in August/September.
Listen to Glenn’s chat with Zan Rowe on Double J.
Read a review by Bernard Zuel here.
Tracklisting:
1. In the Court of the Cat King
2. Alive (Until You're Not)
3. New Songwriter
4. U R
5. Lake Drive
6. FIBATTY!
7. Last Aid Kit
8. Stalker 1986
9. My Midi Life
10. Backyard Arcana
11. Never Be Your Boy
Released: December 10, 2020
In The Court of the Cat King
Bilious the moon
Swollen on our gloom.
Seems prematurely June,
I’ve yet of May to sing.
A year of plague and penury
How long til it’s a memory?
How long is a piece of string
In the court of the Cat King?
‘As long as I say it is,
As long as I say!’
All of us are prey,
We forget along the way,
Lured by the toxic spring
Along the river to the court of the Cat King…
Along the river of oblivion,
Writ on the waters of oblivion,
Every letter from a father to son,
Every lyric of a love unsung.
All of us are prey,
We forget along the way,
All of us are summer rain
on winter clay.
None of us are free, (but my bird, it flies!)
But imagine it to be, (and my bird, it sings!)
How long will your songbird sing
Until it’s caught in the court of the Kingdom of the Cat King?
‘As long as I say it will,
As long as I say!’
Alive (Until You’re Not)
Troubles in the soul
Drown them in the bowl
Pick a pack of percocet
pep your pan and pickle it
every trouble soon forget
It’s a happenin’ thing
If it’s happenin’ to ya
Today is in the bottle
Tomorrow’s sure shot and the past doesn’t matter
tomorrow’s sure shot, baby what you got? you’re alive
and in motion
Until you’re not
Racin’ verse to verse
Too fast for love I’m gonna break the bridge
and crash into the chorus
like a blind fuckin’ tortoise on speed wearin’ adidas
Now that’s a happenin’ thing if it’s happenin’ to ya
life is its own participation prize
the car’s in the car park the kids don’t really matter
it’s hot in the city hear the pitter patter you’re alive
and in motion
Until you’re not
Pardon me Luther
As I gather up the rope And pray I
remember how to use it
“Everything that is done in this world is done by hope”
Now it’s a happenin’ thing
If it’s happenin’ to ya
sometimes it runs right through ya but
Don’t waste your time away searchin’ for
Don’t waste your time away searchin’
You’re alive and in motion
Until you’re not
New Songwriter
Everybody’s got a guy
Everybody’s got a writer in a room
working late into the dog afternoon
on some slick serenade, some twee teeny toon
but my guy’s not doing so well
He’s drinking all night and sleeping all day
It’s all gone to hell
I’ve been trying to tell him
that’s my job not yours
I’m the face of the franchise
you’re the heartbeat under the boards
Everybody knows the lie
Everybody knows the land and its lay
The grift is much quicker and easier
than the graft today
but my guy seems to’ve figured it out
He’s opened the door
to the attic oh lord
now it’s all arse about!
I plead my case and implore but
he just dances away
Now I’m the face in the portrait
and he’s a new born Dorian Gray
With great calamity
there comes opportunity
this has been proven to me
every now and then
Now I find myself alone
I shall have to write my own
And how could it go wrong
It’s just a little a song, no?
No
That’s why everybody’s got a guy
Everybody’s got some stiff up in a room
doing the things we don’t know how to do
while we bask in the light of a credit or two
but my guy’s not toeing the line
He says he’s tired of being in prison
and doing somebody else’s time
My guy’s checked out of the Tower of Song
trashed the room left a mess
and no forwarding address
all have is this note on a crumpled up kleenex
“I’ve been trying to tell you
for a very long time
all these liquid emotions
well they’re probably mine
You’re not getting very much younger
and baby you ain’t getting brighter
Perhaps you need to find yourself a new songwriteeeeerup!!
Everybody’s got a guy
Everybody’s got some gimp down in a cage
running the lines til they’re palatable
or just about edgy enough for this age of lies.
U R
You’re a clown, you’re a dandy, you’re a fop…(U R)
You’re a death’s head upon a mop…(U R)
You’re not here, you don’t get to say it…(but U R)
Yesterday I took the bus out to Berriedale,
Turns out I was never there…(but U R)
You’re a scapegrace who’s out of luck…(U R)
You’re a mooncalf baby, you suck…(U R)
You’re not here you don’t get to say it…(but U R)
Often I wonder, when things have me under,
What strange motivations to ends.
Ends that conspire to make me a stranger,
and make enemies of my friends…(U R)
You’re a pong, you’re a poor cologne…(U R)
You’re just sittin’ there all alone…(U R)
Why don’t you give me a call?
Why don’t I give you a call?
Now I am tired and sad and quite wasted
and sat in the dark on my own…(U R)
Most of the time seems like all of the good years
are gone, and I’ve blown them all…
But that’s just silly…(U R)
Lake Drive
It’s a scrambling kind of life,
it could finish any time,
of hard to locate station, a flickering picture kind
of over supply of days, then always exhausted time,
of ambient desperation, a keening wave of sine.
And really baby really, that would probably be fine,
Never sure if what I thought, was a clambering up, a climb
wasn’t a pivot down, wasn’t
a slow decline,
When you’re always scrambling you’re always digging
down into the hungry lime.
The deep moronic base,
The ruthless icing on the cake,
the puling soggy centre,
makes for sentimental paste.
Profane geography does the range of dividing make -
I couldn’t mander the gerry,
I drove my car into the lake.
Nothing made sense anymore…(not that it ever did)
Nothing makes sense anymore…(not that it ever will)
A little early in the piece
To be from my senses released,
A little green for a critical break,
Still, I drove my car into the lake.
When you’re not dying you’re not dying, you’re not really living not really,
the thing you reach out to touch it isn’t much, it’s touchy feely.
It’s a scrambling kind of life, a spanning of barely par,
A scrambling life that isn’t? Well they rarely are.
Heaven has always been on earth, it’s for the bankers and killers,
magnum daddies and their pretties, mercenary gorillas.
It isn’t for me anymore…(not that it ever was)
It’s all just a little bit fake, so I drive my car into the lake…
FIBATTY!
Fuck it’s been a terrible twenty years.
Fuck it’s been a terrible twenty years.
Fuck it’s been a terrible twenty years.
Fuck it’s been a terrible twenty years.
Last Aid Kit
My mind’s unclear,
I’ve a capital idea,
Full head of steam
on my capitalist dream,
you better let me get to it
or someone else is gonna do it.
If you’re goin’ won’t you wanna know
you can go the way you wanna go?
Instead of sufferin’ through it.
You better let me get to it.
Everybody’s gonna want one,
Everybody’s gonna need one.
Mares eat oats, does eat oats,
little lambs eat ivy.
Preachers get votes on billionaire boats,
eat the little lambs with mint and gravy.
So let me get in on this capitalist shit,
bonafide mail order suicide kit.
Everybody’s gonna want one,
Everybody’s gonna need one.
Ain’t that the essence of the game?
Faceless profit on a terminal plain…
Sail on sailor,
frail first mate,
sail between the islands of the church and the state.
Stalker 1986
Last time I was round your house
I needed no invitation
I strolled right through your very open door.
Now it’s full of strangers,
I can’t count the changes,
How things will shift.
It’s different than before.
Now you give to strangers what you once kept just for me,
Now you fan your favours out for free.
Is retiring my nature the fee I have to pay?
I miss you, there’s nothing else to say.
Once I had your ear
and you would prize my conversation,
Once I had permission for your bed.
Now I feel a parasite, now I feel a louse,
It’s the last time I’ll be round your house.
My Midi Life
All dots connect in my midi life
All blocks divinely shift in my midi life, my midi life
It's so easy
My midi life
The life into which I've retreated
Meticulous and Precise
Each day a pattern repeated
I randomise for flavour
Engage the arpeggiator
Up or down it’s mine to decide
All the days of
my midi life
Copy and paste, copy and paste
Copy and paste, copy and paste
All dots connect in my midi life
Upon the sine I drift in my midi life, my midi life
So brilliant
my midi life
The life into which I've retreated
Impossibly clever and bright
And nobody knows that I've cheated
Each day and night
So never not right
Fastened to my rack of light
Purity is all, energy is rife
In my midi life
Copy and paste, copy and paste
Copy and paste, copy and paste
All dots connect in my midi life
In harmony sublime I’m lifted by my midi life, my midi life
I have drawn
The future in
The past is repaired and repeated
There'll be no more pain in my midi life
The life into which I've retreated
Each moment I have selected
And marked to be deleted
I am surgeon with a pretty knife
Cutting the pain
From my midi life
Copy and paste, copy and paste
Copy and paste, SAVE ME….
Backyard Arcana
Buried in the corner of the yard
Only if you listen very hard
I’m always gonna lose
So you’re always gonna lose
In the yard of a house
full of dumb little mouths
singing the same old song
Whether the amount is negligible
Whether the addiction is tamed
I spilt my ink and I've got nothing left to drink
so I let me a pint, to make a fine point
To open up my bloody mind again
Oh words are fire in the right room,
Depend on me for nothing
Gold in the eye of a jaguar
the King gets his iron from Mars
His copper from Venus the Devil has seen us
Milling about, wrestling with doubt
In the backyard of a burning house
Oh words are fire in the right room,
Depend on me for nothing
Why'd you have to bury that toy?
Why do I have to destroy?
The tea tree casts my mind to the past
but I don't think of you, not anymore
Never any more at all.
Never Be Your Boy
Some caramel morning,
Look down on the street,
A little something dawning,
Then a somebody meet.
Are you one that’s going to be
My B A B Why
Baby?
In my triple tracked, vaguely Dylanesque affectation,
I sing…”I’ll never be your boy…”
Did they make you a sucker?
Do you suck all the time?
Well I don’t find it hard to write the next line,
Cos words don’t mean that much to you
When you can get by on just a one or two
phrases in the popular circulation.
That’s why I’ll never be your boy
Now welcome to the eight,
don’t it feel like you invented it?
But it’s only a few bars of space and baby you only rented it,
The tricky part is ending it
While pretending you never meant it.
Sounds like a party,
Like when we were young,
Oh didn’t we do something?
But you never lived here,
this wasn’t your time,
You stole the flavour
and the rhyme…
Now you sing “everything’s gonna be alright!”
don’t ya baby?
And “we’re all in this together!”
don’t say maybe….
That’s why I’ll never be your boy…
Some made up morning,
Some faked up street,
I can’t keep from yawning
shuffling my feet.
Are you the one that’s going to be
My idiotic baby?
Lyrics by Glenn A Richards (Sony/ATV Music Publishing)
