#705-#701

#705. Sticky Fingers - Sad Songs (#36, 2016)

75th of 2016

Talking about Sticky Fingers is one of my least favourite things to do because everyone's pretty set on their impression of the band and not even enlightened centrism can succeed in not causing immense anger in taking the wrong side of their wedge issue of existence. It's been so long since I last wrote about them here (about 6 months!) that I actually forgot that they're gonna keep showing up.

If you're not across this discourse, I'll do my best to summarise it, but there's inherently an issue where so much of it comes down to unreliable and/or disputed accounts of events. Unless you're a direct witness, you're only going off hearsay, and people on both sides of the argument are always going to distort it to their preference. Even if what they're saying is blatantly incorrect, they'll always succeed in casting some amount of doubt or confusion. I obviously wasn't present for any of it, so I cannot provide a definitive answer of whether or not Sticky Fingers are victims of a smear campaign, rightfully facing the consequences of their actions.

It all starts in 2016. The band are riding high, scoring their first (and to date only) #1 album in Australia. Word gets out about the lead singer Dylan Frost attending a concert for the band Dispossessed. He's accused of shouting racist remarks at the time although later evidence suggests this wasn't true. This leads to a later altercation with Thelma Plum at a bar where they're both intoxicated. Dylan is once again accused of making racist remarks and also spitting on her. A friend of Dylan offers a slightly different account that again suggests racism didn't come up although both were very hostile to each other. I remember seeing comments on social media in late 2016 calling out triple j for continuing to play Sticky Fingers as if there was nothing untoward. This is very much what happened and the band had a big haul of entries on both sides of the top 100.

In 2018, after largely not commenting on the saga, Sticky Fingers came in to do an interview on triple j's Hack program to set the record straight. This is another one where your opinion on how it went depends on how much leeway you're willing to give the band. It should be noted that Dylan has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but the one part of the interview that lives on as a quote is where he lets out the phrase 'boys will be boys'. At this point there was enough uproar for triple j to blacklist the band. For two whole years triple j didn't play their music at all, only breaking the embargo once their Hottest 100 of the Decade countdown galvanised voters to go in hard for the band to force triple j to play them (though I'm sure they would have polled to some extent if none of this took place), which they did without making much of a big deal about it. They have very scarcely played the band since then, but mostly only their older hits. They played the lead single to their latest album once in 2021, but otherwise no airtime for anything after their 2016 album.

A lot of the discourse has been driven by online media and a lot of it is in articles that are no longer available online. Musicfeeds once issued an apology to the band for their part in swaying the narrative, while noted Murdoch media arm The Australian published a very one-sided defence of the band in 2018. The article was written by Deborah Cornwall which is either a massive coincidence or she's a relative of the band's bassist Paddy Cornwall. I can't seem to figure out what the truth is for this one. Once again, the internet being full of people just saying things without any proof or knowledge is a pox on research. Said bassist has also had an unhinged rant against triple j while later apologising for it, and Dylan Frost has also seemed unspiteful about triple j's actions in a recent interview.

This would all be the end of it, until a 2023 Bluesfest lineup featured Sticky Fingers. A high profile band I'll eventually talk about seemingly pulled out of the festival as a result. The organiser of Bluesfest initially marketed the decision as Sticky Fingers being 'the bad boys of Australian rock, defending their initial decision, but then eventually succumbing to the criticism and removing them from the line up. A classic lose-lose situation for a festival that is still going strong (this is definitely what I wrote 2 months ago). Sticky Fingers have also been in punch-ups with each other. There hasn't been any news about the band in the last year or so but there's a long time between me writing and posting this so I'll never say never.

There you have it, make up your own mind. I do think that much like the Taylor Swift situation I'm sure I'll also debrief (it should be briefer...oh my, I predicted badly there), it's one of those cases where the discourse all gets so ugly that everyone is forced to pick a side and there's no way to calmly communicate about it (you won't catch me ever talking about it on the triple j subreddit for instance). Each side is just going to sound deranged and biased to the other, while anyone without stakes is just going to want to tune out from it all. That's somewhat how I go through it. I just get tired of all the mudslinging and find Sticky Fingers to be a band I can live without. That's largely because I've never had strong feelings about them, but I understand they're a big deal for a lot of people and I'm not going to hold it against them for still enjoying their music new and old. At the end of the day, the band are extremely popular and do not need triple j airplay to carry on with their dedicated following. Lots of bands disappear from triple j rotation without any controversy attached.

"Sad Songs" is pretty good. I don't find it as memorable as the other two big hits from this album, but it always ends up being better than I remember it.

#704. RÜFÜS DU SOL - Take Me (#21, 2013)

75th of 2013

I made my first Twitter account back in 2009. In the very early years of Twitter, it thrived on the bizarre curiosity of it. As a website for interesting content, it was total garbage back then. There's almost no such thing as a memorable tweet from the 2000s because almost everyone was just coming to grips with the novelty of hashtags and the freedom to just say whatever. Everyone contributing to the deluge of nothing but in an ironic way. That's what I did for sure. One of the last things I ever tweeted was some empty remark about my disapproval of the overplay of "Take Me" at the time, with a follow up tweet where I suggest that years down the track I'll see that tweet and think 'wtf is "Take Me"?'. With RÜFÜS DU SOL becoming global superstars and "Take Me" remaining one of their biggest hits, it's hard to ever imagine me being sound of mind and not remembering this song.

"Take Me" feels like the song that started it all. It isn't actually. I mentioned when talking about them previously that they had some recognition in 2011 with their song "Paris Collides", but this is the song that took them from a band you might just hear in your head being back announced by your triple j presenter of choice, to a band that you couldn't ignore. It was a meteoric rise that saw them regularly impacting the ARIA Singles Chart, and debuting at #1 with their first album.

I still have trouble reckoning with "Take Me" as being 100% That Song, but it has grown on me considerably over the years. Getting more accustomed to RÜFÜS DU SOL helps in that regard as there wasn't really much to compare them to at the time. Any artist that goes some way towards shifting the zeitgeist is often going to be met with befuddlement. Actually I guess "Take Me" wasn't first in that regard. A year before it we had Parachute Youth's hit "Can't Get Better Than This", a song I also found confusingly minimal but I eventually succumbed to the effective groove. "Take Me" comes up a little unfavourably by comparison, I think it just needs a catchier hook.

#703. Bring Me The Horizon - sTraNgeRs (#38, 2022)

72nd of 2022

I want to avoid saying that I find a lot of the POST HUMAN singles to be interchangeable, but I do find it oddly useful to continue refreshing my collection of them every year. Maybe it reflects badly on the earlier editions though. I'm listening to this now and just thinking 'I'd rather be hearing "Kool-Aid" right now, this one's lost the excitement factor.

Once again I find myself writing about a metalcore adjacent song about mental health. Compared to "All F**ked Up" (#827), this song feels more considered in the mission statement, although with less hope on the other side. The song itself is fairly straightforward and gimmick-free for a Bring Me The Horizon song at this stage. Pretty good all up, just not something with much to remark about.

#702. Dune Rats - Braindead (#75, 2017)

69th of 2017

Sometimes these things write themselves. Here we have Dune Rats, a band from Brisbane, Queensland, writing a song about revelling in one's own low ambitions, aptitude and performance. At least I think that's how the state by state stereotypes tend to work out. My stereotype is that I live thousands of kilometres away from everyone else and spend very little time trying to compare and compete. You will never be as irrelevant and hedonistic as us, Queensland.

On the other hand, these things don't write themselves, and sometimes I'm stuck at my desk with a Dune Rats song that's so aware of how checked out they can & want to be that they'll finish off a verse with 'blah blah blah blah blah'. It's an act so brazen that it can't help but be the most memorable thing about "Braindead". Taking it on its own terms, it's a pretty solid and catchy tune. They find a good hook in here that's fun to sing, and I also have some fondness for the way the intro slowly revs up. They could've easily just jumped straight into action and it'd be fine, but holding back all the elements gives them a more star-studded entrance. You just have to choose not to hear one of the more mockery-laden parts of the song in that same melody that's being played.

#701. Big Scary - Luck Now (#96, 2013)

74th of 2013

Big Scary were a bit of a tough sell for me at the time. Around the time that their debut album came out in 2011, I found most of my catharsis through loud and engaging music. Maybe there was room for something on the lighter side, but I couldn't find a purpose for this duo who split it down the middle. They came close to making the Hottest 100 that year too, "Gladiator" landed at #104. I probably didn't think much of it at the time but there's a likeable quality to it. A much less restrained Big Scary while they're still figuring things out.

At the same time, I never would've thought they had big things ahead of them either. They're the portrait of a respectable band that gets good press about them, but the general voting populace is never going to be incredibly moved. So it was somewhat surprising to see this song get the chocolates in 2013, although it did seem more well-rounded and memorable of a song. This is of course only half of the story, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I still wasn't fully convinced on Big Scary, I thought they had a low ceiling. That was until I happened across the song "Belgian Blues" from the same album as this. The cliff notes are that it's Low and Jeff Buckley worship but it's so well produced that it brings out the best of both worlds. Sometimes understanding the appeal of one song is enough to help the rest of the discography click. I wouldn't go quite that far but I'm a bit more favourable on the whole.

"Luck Now" is a weird song. It has a distinctive drum loop that exists to throw you off your guard, sounding faster than it should be, but with very pronounced gaps. It runs through the entire song like this without ever changing. There's a little bit of piano sprinkled in that doesn't quite overpower it, but does feel like foreshadowing of things to come. Like what if it got to be the centre of attention?