So begins the first LP by Models, a Melbourne band who, along with a few significant cohorts, established a shaky bridge over the ravine between the mainstream and the threatening, many-visaged theatre of post punk. They begin with the atmosphere of an electronic band but they riff in the next track like a rock band. The guitar playing the riff is not overdriven but clean and thick. Strategic Air Command, starting like a jet fighter rising into the blue and the strangled vocals of Sean Kelly gravelling out a short phrase verse melody before the backing vocals burst in: bombs away, that's ok, error in your favour. The phrasing of early computing and automated service. The language is military but it's about a "mock-up" plane. He's trying to entice someone into his lair. There he is the Air Vice Marshall. This odd take on mating from 1980 could be a gamer's anthem from 2020. That's reach.
Two People Per Sq. Km is gutteral verse, singing sax, spiky guitar and bass on a real workout. The existential perils of a place with massively more land than people. A thick, syntheised intrumental break and the chanted chorus: Dancing makes me seasick. Next, a big, bright synth riff and sharp chordy guitar with the kind of quirky love song heads to a half spoken chorus: she pulled the pin on me.
A galloping bass is joined by a stilted spaghetti western guitar riff in Twice removed. This stops abruptly at the verse which is almost a chant but set to a kind of battered Latin beat. Synth and organ dissonance, seared by more sax. A taut low string guitar riff through a chorus would recall the Cure if not for its arch wink. An staccato organ progression as bright as an ice cream commercial starts Pate Pedestrian and an insistent piano rising figure support the words about his feet getting hot on the spot and that he's a pate pedestrian. Models are from Melbourne and know enough of those to write a song about them. It's an end of side song so it just gets left on rather than chosen first.
A rushing tomtom and big synth arpeggio. Kelly comes in with a few growled lines before the whole band chants: You cheat on her she cheats on you. Kissing Around Corners. A sublime keyboard ascension then repeat. If this were the halved Human League to come this song would have neo disco pretensions but this is pure fun, stopping here and there for a kind of John Carpenter movie synth break before plunging back into the thick pop bliss.
All Stop has a finger clicking 2/4 strut with a skeletal echoed guitar over a bass on full treble. Compelling but it's hard to get a grip on the lyric. Is it about working in advertising? War fottage on tv? A middle section features a panning chopper rattle. It ends on more skeletor guitar, a hummed repetition of the title and a fade. Uncontrollable Boy is an unruly Bossa Nova with Telstar organ. He's unruly himself as the song gives way to a rock instrumental which feels stiff by comparison and the shambling Latin groove is welcome back.
Young Rodents asks us into a shadow with a big bass arpeggio and dirty alley sax. "Plays like a cat, he's a cute little boy." A creepy middle section resigns that they will have to kill them. Somewhere between the scratchers of Hamelin and the future Birthday Party dirge Nick the Stripper lies this strange, unnerving dream. No less a worry is the next track. Hans Stand: A War Record. A fade in of marimbas. Kelly's strangled voice enters gently, telling Hans to clean the church. The title tells where Hans has come from. It fades almost before it's begun.
And then, the albums master track, the one I heard in my head all the way from Brisbane to Melbourne on a Bus so loud with a yobbo's blaring cassette of the new Dire Straits album that my memory of the Model's track had to struggle. But it won.
Happy Birthday IBM starts without a breath as a bass on the edge of overdrive plays a stuttered two note figure then down a tone. Drums then guitar. Then the mighty synth melody descending in staccato slices into the nervous systems of every one who hears it. "Happy Birthday!" chants the band. "Happy Birthday IBM". An effortless major key squiggle on the keyboards and repeat. But this is Models so you don't repetition until you've tried it a few different ways in the same song. A break restarts with slices of guitar and a cartoony low register synth riff as a big deep voice expands the IBM abbreviation. Chorus chant fades into a ring modulated tom tom and industrial hiss.
There had been plenty of songs about computers and by the early '80s the theme felt weary. Even the strong Mi-Sex charter Computer Games felt a little naff for all its nu-wave force. But this didn't mention computers. It mentioned their maker. And it used them in sequencing. And it suggested the brutalist music they could make and turn us into without a single line about how impersonal they were. And it was fun. The corporate anthem feel to the chorus really is infectious. You can't get away with a single listen without at least wanting to sing in perfect unison with it.
With the strength of sticking to a constant instrumental pallet, some burgeoning songcraft poking through the alt.rock aloofness and a non-gothic delight in the darker corners of the city, Models made me think of Melbourne years before I got there. I saw them a few times and they were good but at the time I wanted them to sound like the spiky, quirky records they made. Then again, as I was to discover, the city of their birth left its stamp on them as much as it did to all its musical children. Part cabaret, part grand guignol Models added a blue-grey smudge to a canvas that just kept getting busier and darker...and more fun.
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