DZ Deathrays w/ Bleeding Knees Club – The Macbeth, London 07/05/11

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Bleeding Knees Club

If you’re itching with impatience for the return of Beavis and Butthead this summer (and let’s face it, who isn’t?), you could do worse than turning to Australia’s Bleeding Knees Club for temporary succour. (“Hnnr, hnnr, she said ‘suck’! Like blowjob! Hnnr hnnr.”) MTV’s puerile twosome will return this summer the same ages we left them. Outside the pub before the gig, BKC’s Jordan (floppy blonde hair) laments how the music press keeps writing that him and bandmate Alex (shaggy brown hair) are teen kids. They’re now all of 21, having written their first songs between the ages of 19 and 2. It’s an easy mistake to make though – onstage, the two of them bicker at each other and mock the crowd like fun. “I wish I was better at guitar,” drawls Jordan after yet another short, sharp two-minute blast. “Shut up and play the next song, dickhead,” retorts Alex, both their drummer and possessed of a singing whine that sounds like gargling grit in blood. But what’s more is that they play with the vim of kids who just heard the Ramones and The Strokes for the first time, and have to tell EVERYONE RIGHT AWAY, just in case you’re not aware of them. They cover ‘Bad Generation’ like ‘Is This It’-era Strokes jamming with Wavves, Alex sings of being so high he lost his mind, and the super bratty ‘I Just Wanna Have Fun’ recalls Best Coast’s addictive apathy.

The real show, however, comes from Brisbane’s DZ Deathrays, Alex and Jordan’s labelmates back home. In the same week that Death From Above 1979 played what are probably going to be their last ever UK shows (save for Reading and Leeds) DZ are your new gnarly saviours. After the first thirty seconds, a ridiculous fight pit starts, timing with Shane Parsons’ riffs with awesomely cinematic synchronicity. A deranged hesher knocks the mic into Shane’s teeth (he keeps singing), and drummer Simon Ridley takes a huge gulp of beer – whilst keeping a cymbal fill going with the other hand, naturally – with the sole purpose of spitting it everywhere (it’s hot in here, mmkay?). Their riffs turn stubborn, suddenly throwing the slam dancers off-sync when they refuse to chug predictably, their drums sparkle and smack in glittering LCD precision, and ‘Gebbie Street’ contains more carnal filth in three minutes than Beavis and Butthead ever experienced firsthand in their entire eternal youth. You have to see them live. That’s an order.