Muddy Turds, The - I Don’t Think They’ve Given It Any Thought Whatsoever (Album)
» Halfmast + The Belchers + Modus + The Muddy Turfs - Batman Fawkner, Tas - June 18, 2005
The album title fits like a rubber glove and although it comes from an amusing 3RRR on-air bullocking of their band name, The Muddy Turds are thankfully not all about shit. They’re not all that much about sanity either, but as far as wacky Tasmanian blues punk rock & rollers go, it could be worse. For all we know, they could be waste disposal expert Kenny’s favourite band, which is better than nothing.
Mark Downie (lead vocals, bass and ukulele) and Beau Thomas (drums and backing vocals) are joined by various others they affectionately dub the “floating Turds”, whom drift in and out mainly upon waves of harmonica but also guitar, organ and some additional and sometimes quite handy backing vocals.
I laughed… twice. Okay, maybe three times. However, if you don’t find any humour whatsoever in things like sewage (aw, c’mon), body parts and/or other puerile stuff, then like an Olympian you’ll just want this record broken. Otherwise, try enjoying the extremely lighthearted, bopping-natured hoedown and laugh yourself trans-Tasmanly stupid at its range of subject matter.
From Fruit Platter about a girl who reminds them of fruit, to ATM Machine about the girl on the ATM machine, back to Bad Breath Blues which is – you guessed it - about a girl with bad breath. There’s also Date at the Airport (self explanatory); Mail Order Bride (ditto); Dacks – which offers the pickup line “Hey baby, I wanna eat your dacks”; Wah Wahoo with the lyrics “I want to stick my Google into your Yahoo”; the wise observation that “blokes are shit ‘cos they got no tits” on Blokes and never mind the (hopefully mock) bestiality theme of the album’s hidden track, because it’s actually a fair piece of music. Apart from the harmonious ATM Machine I also appreciated Ghost of My Pet Panda and even the 30-odd seconds of Naughty Monkey Song; examples of the Turds sounding somewhat more focused and dare I say, a more ‘real’ or perhaps ‘normal’ band.
File this somewhere in the tatty yet colourful box, along with TISM (and/or ROOT), The Drugs, King Missile’s or Ween’s B-sides and even Lano & Woodley in parts. One gets the feeling this could be funnier, muddier and perhaps even turds-ier in person than on this fairly low fi compact disc recording, but that remains to be seen - literally. If so, I won’t be getting too close … especially if there’s ceiling fans.
