The Thousands

Clever cats Taco Leg and Dave West manage one magnificent pun to summarise their cross-continental cassette project Pauline Manson. Taking the famous loons of their respective abodes – red-haired redneck Pauline Hanson in Australia and cult leader Charles Manson in the US – they put out two sides of a tape, recorded on each side of the equator; 999 in San Francisco in 2010 and Washed To Oblivion in Guildford a year later.

In any case, the world of play-punk is full of wit and whimsy and if everyone took themselves too seriously, bands like Beat Happening wouldn’t exist, if they didn’t take themselves seriously enough bands like The Fall wouldn’t have happened. Incidentally, each of these groups leave their indelible mark on Pauline Manson, which carries on both of those bands’ inclination towards primitive instrumentation and post-punk messthetics which masks a screwed up sense of humour: 999/Washed To Oblivion is full of songs about how to get by during the GFC, drunk dads, crushed souls and shitty life choices – all veiled under a rowdy clamour of guys who don’t give a toss. Sounds like a party to me.