Drunk Mums: Drunk Mums

- Nothing like a bit of controversy to help move some units, especially not in rock'n'roll. Dirty, lurid and in this case, aged sex sells, except on iTunes apparently. You may have noticed that Drunk Mums, a bunch of four garage-rocking louts, originally from Cairns and (presumably run out of there by enraged church-goers) now residing in Melbourne, have just put out their debut album. You won't find it on iTunes, because the boys - full of artistic integrity as they are - refused to change the album art-work, which features a finely aged rack of saggy breasts. "Stuff those suits at iTunes...This image is spot on and best represents Drunk Mums. All the people who matter will still find us buy our record." I'm sure, and, in the band's defence, it really does capture the essence of the Drunk Mums. Just in case you were in any doubt they open their self-titled full-length with Big Titty Tripping. It's actually quite difficult to decipher the lyrics through the fuzz, but I did manage to grab "Trippin' on the size of your titties / Now they're going to sag"... excellent!
There is that requisite garage fuzz, sometimes the Mums like to get decidedly punky and they always take things very quickly, but despite that and their intense moral decrepitude, they are consistenly tuneful and very tight. Yep, they manage to remain thoroughly, surfily melodic, while riffing on themes such as vomiting blood, felatio and self-mutilation. In the end it amounts to very manageable ratios of surly and sweet. The garage-rock thing might be getting close to its end, but Drunk Mums manage to be a pretty pleasant reminder of what can be achieved by four young men who might otherwise be in prison.

- Chris Cobcroft.