The Chats “Get F**ked” 2022. Bargain Bin Records, “milk” vinyl variant. Most excellent snotty punk via Australia. We saw The Chats headline at the Rave this week: so fun! so punk! – the show both so great and not-so. The great: I love The Chats’ style of punk: tight, snotty (not screamy), hysterically funny, decidabley low-brow: think Ramones, Sex Pistols, etc. singing about food, smokes, cars, money or lack thereof and drinking beer. The not so was some of the crowd: fights, some asshole behind us getting all up in our business, so bad I called security over to keep an eye on him (he was that threatening).

Anyway! They played a ton of super-short tracks, a bunch from their latest release Get Fucked, which went to #2 in Australia and hit #77 in the UK (#3 on the UK’s indie chart). Especially fun was “6L GTR” which is catchy-as-hell and gets stuck in my head for days (not complaining) and “Struck By Lightning” which totally channels their AC/DC heroes; they’ve released both as singles. They may or may not have played some of my other top picks from Get Fucked (I did get a bit distracted by that fucking asshole behind us): “Ticket Inspector” (such a great rat-a-tat-tat attack on that one) “Dead on Site” and the garagey “Emperor of the Beach.” They did play a track from Get Fucked that I’m just OK about, “The Price of Smokes,” but that song was a show highlight; some audience members tossed unlit/fresh cigarettes up onto the stage during most of the song. Singer/bassist Eamon Sandwith tried, unsuccessfully, to catch them in his mouth. We were right up at the rail by guitarist Josh Hardy and watching him was hilarious – he looked borderline flummoxed during most of the show and especially when he played particularly shredding riffs and solos. The drummer was hidden from my view a lot of the time but he looks like a 16 year old California surfer and is just so adorable.