Rudely InterruptedLove You Till I Die
Indie

- A guitar chord rings out. A snare drum cracks. The singer enters emphatically: “She likes calculus, and drinking tea!” It is one of the best song openings of the year, and it comes from Anything Is Possible, the second track off Melbourne band Rudely Interrupted’s new seven track mini-album Love You Till I Die.

Rudely Interrupted have been around for a decade now, and the new record doesn’t stray too far from the familiar. Fuzzy guitar and ‘80’s style keyboard, power pop melodies, quirky and positive lyrics.

At first listen you might say it’s a nice but unremarkable record, but the appeal of Rudely Interrupted is not just in this set of songs. The members of the band come with a diversity of life experience – singer Rory Burnside is blind, has aspergers and epilepsy. Drummer Josh Hogan is autistic and has a bone disorder, while bass player/dancer Sam Beke has Downes’ syndrome. Even Rohan Brooks, the disability support worker who brought the band together; had an accident since the last release and now has 24 titanium pins holding his foot together.

With this in mind, weighing up the musical merits of Rudely Interrupted brings up an interesting question – are the various members’ disabilities an integral part of the band or not? It seems the answer from the band is no. The press release that accompanies this release makes no mention of it, only somewhat cryptically saying they are “not a novelty band”. That seems to be a reasonable egalitarian notion – that a band should be judged on the worth of their songs alone, not on whether they are physically or neurologically different to any other act.

It’s never really just about the music though, is it? Mostly when it comes to appreciating art, part of the appeal is who the artist is and how their life experience has influenced their creation. The increasing prominence in recent years of what is broadly called “identity politics” has added to this. This school of thought often says it is impossible to divorce an artwork or genre from its social and cultural context. And among the many often marginalised groups who have used this framework to construct positive identities are people with intellectually or physically “different abilities”.

If we’re honest, I think most fans of Rudely Interrupted would admit a big part of why we like the band is those quirks the members possess – the Downes’ Syndrome of Sam Beke is what gives him such onstage charisma. The sense of fun and hope that lifts the music beyond just new wave retro pop comes from the fact that these are people who are not often given stages on which to perform. Without that factor, all the lines like “you can be anything you want to be” would just be kind of irritating.

I can understand people who would take the first approach to our question. But hopefully the role the band’s disabilities play is not to elicit sympathy or freakshow voyeurism from the listener. It is fundamentally an affirmation of the members’ worth as people. An honest view of humanity as a whole doesn’t lead to the conclusion that there is one typical state of being and everything else is an inferior copy. The truth is there are infinite unique people with different abilities who each have something to contribute to our world. I’m pretty sure this is what Rudely Interrupted are referring to when they sing “we’re here to change this world for the better/we’re all in this together”. So with that out of the way, I’d like to say Rudely Interrupted are a great band, and Love You Till I Die is sixteen minutes of catchy and infectiously joyous power pop.

- Andy Paine.

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