Photo: Supplied
It’s not a reference to the worrying spin-the-barrel brain blast of Russian Roulette, in case you’re wondering. Neither is it a nod to that spinning wheel/ jumpy marble arrangement that gives gamblers sweaty palms in a casino.
The Roulettes’ band name comes instead from Roulette Records, an American record label that was really a money laundering operation for the Genovese mafia.
“Our band name expresses our somewhat jaded view of the music industry,” singer/ guitarist Justin McLean tells me via email from his Auckland home.
“It also links us to legendary 1960s Roulette Records pop stars Tommy James and The Shondells! Also, Roulette’s founder Morris Levy was the inspiration for Hesh in The Sopranos…”
The Roulettes performing Photo: Supplied
Whatever. All I can say is, a great band deserves a great name – evocative, mysterious, laden with notions of motion and risk. And this, my friends, is a great band.
I first hard The Roulettes three years ago when a review copy of their self-titled 2014 debut album dropped into my mailbox.
It was raw, exciting, fuzzy yet vivid. The songs were emotionally intense without being the least bit overwrought, with an economy of sound and gesture evident in every high-pressure garage-pop ditty.
I loved it immediately, so I tracked down an email address a few months later and asked what else was in the pipeline.
A second album, they said. Or maybe an EP. They were working on it, and it would be out very soon.
Only, it wasn’t. Time dragged by – weeks, months, a whole freakin’ year, and occasional MP3s would hit my InBox (“Here’s a new track from us! More to come!”) of completed songs that might or might not make the final cut.
I hassled them for some background info on the band, which arrived in a particularly epic email encompassing two decades of noise-making.
The Roulettes - Venus burns album artwork Photo: Supplied
The guts? Comprising Ben Grant (bass/ vocals), Justin McLean (guitar/ vocals) and Mark Queenin (drums), The Roulettes formed in Dunedin in 2002 and are now based in Auckland.
McLean and Grant have known each other since soon after they were weaned from the maternal breast, and went to the same “hippy-ish” pre-school in the 1970s.
They both played in assorted Dunedin bands during the 90s, including joining forces in Funhouse, and McLean also cropped up in an early version of Bike alongside Straitjacket Fits’ Andrew Brough. Queenin is a veteran of Bike and Garageland.
McLean and Grant started writing songs together again after attending an audio engineering course.
Since then there have been two EPs, You Want It (2009) and Unread Books (2010), the first fuelled by gallons of green tea, the second recorded at ‘Ben’s uncle Frank’s woolshed’ in Mercer, followed by that ripper debut album in 2014.
Some of these earlier songs were such potent little mood-nuggets that they ended up gracing the soundtracks of local TV shows (Outrageous Fortune, Filthy Rich, 800 Words).
“We have also had some success with getting our songs on the bNets in the past,” wrote McLean. “And even had a brief fling with The Rock!”
Attached to the same email was a finished track, recorded at Arch Hill studios in Auckland: “A simple, small studio with a hell of a cracking drum sound.”
Entitled ‘Dogs’, it is a perfect pop song, in my view: raw, hectic and thrilling, an inspired confluence of careering riffs and shiny melody that sticks in your head as tight as any filling.
With its sharp guitars, busy bassline, crashing drums and precise backing harmonies, ‘Dogs’ reminds me of The Skids or The Jam – an agitated punk sound with anthemic undercurrents.
But there’s something else here, too: a sense of abandon and joy, a pop-nerd tunefulness, recalling killer 60s-inspired indie stalwarts such as Scotland’s Teenage Fanclub.
With mentions of welfare mothers, the meritocracy, brave new worlds and unfurling flags, the lyrics seem to concern the messy class-war politics of contemporary Aotearoa.
I wrote back to McLean. Great song, but what the hell’s it about?
“The title is a remnant of a precious lyric draft,” he replied. “It stayed, because ‘brand new brave new world’ sucks as a title. I hope I’m not being rude to dogs, who behave better than most humans in power.”
It was, he admitted, an angry political rant. “I don't believe angry, ranty songs change much, but I wanted to go on the record.
“Having said that, there are plenty of bands like Dead Kennedys/The Jam etc that helped inform my values and political beliefs. I’d been reading Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety when I wrote it, which of course ends in a total bloodbath. Revolution, anybody?
“I had also just come across an article which suggested that the world we’re living in is more like Brave New World than 1984, because our dystopia is a comfortable one, with plenty of empty distraction.”
McLean wrote the central guitar riff ‘in about 10 seconds’: “It just leapt out and grabbed me by the ear. Then we spent a while developing it with the rest of the band. Ben’s rising and falling bassline and Mark’s drums totally make it.”
Agreed. And then, as the months wore on, other songs started hitting my InBox that were equally good. By October this year, there were enough of them to form a short, pithy album they have called Venus Burns.
Eight songs, and not a dud amongst them. It took them a few years, and a hack would probably wheel out some cliché about it all being ‘worth the wait’, but I’m just grateful these guys persevered and knocked out something so splendid in the slender gaps between their day jobs.
Title track Venus Burns (In the Blue Above) is quite something, the whole shebang hanging off a “ba- ba- ba- ba” vocal harmony line suspended above churning guitars, with McLean’s voice pitched somewhere between nasal John Lennon falsetto and the fey waver of Marc Bolan.
It’s a bit like The Beatles being covered by early Straitjacket Fits.
“I found myself falling into a meditative reverie while developing this riff,” offers McLean.
“I was watching (British TV crime drama) Southcliffe at the time and there's a scene where a character, who has lost his wife and kids to a David Grey-type shooting, is getting wasted, and it looked to me like he was 'lit by love'.
“My kids also had a lyrical influence; the appearance of Venus in the night sky signalling the end of the day's activities.”
The playing is razor-sharp in these songs, with the rhythm section punchy and nimble beneath McLean’s terse, clanging guitar. But it’s the vocals that seal the deal.
The tense shake in Mclean’s voice is unusual and distinctive; it cuts through these songs, no matter how noisy they might be, and holds your attention. On Slow Dance, he’s a dead ringer for Feargal Sharkey of The Undertones.
“’Slow Dance’ started out as a two-chord experiment in a Lou Reed style shortly after his death.
“It’s based around memories of heading out to a gig or two at Sammy’s in Dunedin while intoxicated by freezing Dunedin air, among other things, and the idea that one is often an unknowing witness to musical and social history, if you can get through the night, that is.”
On other songs, the guitar is really let off the leash. With its overdriven amps and undertone of wired menace, ‘Stealing Electricity’ might almost be The Gordons.
“’Stealing Electricity’ is kinda about seizing opportunities that might be forbidden,” offers McLean. “I was thinking of teenage experiences which would have got us into trouble if we'd been caught.”
There’s an elegant simplicity here, too. Girlfriend embraces the glorious primal knuckle-headedness of rock’n’roll, the intro as basic as any Ramones song, and then proceeds to pile on nifty pop hooks until the song can hold no more and collapses in a giggling heap after just two minutes and 14 seconds. Like I say… perfect.
When I asked McLean to name his own musical references when making this record, he sent me this list:
- Bowie/Ronson
- Beatles
- SJFits
- Gordons/Bailter Space
- Pistols/Jam
- Ramones/Heartbreakers
- Husker Du/Replacements/Strokes
- Neil Young/Crazy Horse/Sebadoh
“…and many more. Oh, and I love the way Link Wray handles his guitar.”
Not one name will come as a surprise when you hear the songs, but The Roulettes have knocked together their own deeply attractive hybrid here.
Given the dreaded ‘difficult second album syndrome’ the swerve in the process, offering up a record both noisier and more focussed than their first.
Venus Burns really was, you know… worth the wait. And even after 15 years together, McLean reckons his band is just getting started.
He suggests the perfect final line for my review might be this one: “File under 'persistent, promising', perhaps?”
Who: The Roulettes
What: new album Venus Burns
When: released November 3rd 2017
Mistc details:
Artist: Tommy James and The Shondells
Song: Crimson and Clover
Comp: Tommy James/ Peter Lucia Jnr.
Album: single version
Label: self-released
Broadcast Time: 3’23”
Artist: The Roulettes
Song: Dogs
Comp: Queenin/ Grant/ McLean
Album: Venus Burns
Label: self-released
Broadcast Time: 2’38”
Artist: The Roulettes
Song: Venus Burns (In The Blue Above)
Comp: Queenin/ Grant/ McLean
Album: Venus Burns
Label: self-released
Broadcast Time: 4’13”
Artist: The Roulettes
Song: Dogs
Comp: Queenin/ Grant/ McLean
Album: Slow Dance
Label: self-released
Broadcast Time: 3’48”
Artist: The Roulettes
Song: Stealing Electricity
Comp: Queenin/ Grant/ McLean
Album: Venus Burns
Label: self-released
Broadcast Time: 3’50”
Artist: The Roulettes
Song: Girlfriend
Comp: Queenin/ Grant/ McLean
Album: Venus Burns
Label: self-released
Broadcast Time: 2’14”
