There have been a few cases of bands creating the perfect promo material for massive corporations over the past few years. King Gizzard wrote the perfect jingle for Australia’s beloved Vegemite; The Durries dedicated an entire EP to their favourite brands of ciggies – indeed, triple J Unearthed deemed their single Marlboro Gold too ‘commercial’ to have on their website; now Donny Love have created the most beautifully filthy video featuring the band and friends fully endorsing a little KFC and VB session. To me it looks like the perfect combination. Man, I could go a beer.
Take a peek into the beautifully seedy backyard lifestyle of Donny Love in Carnivorous Man (Warning: contains sexual references and graphic scenes involving KFC and VB)
Donny Love are four mates from Queensland’s party capital, the sun-soaked Gold Coast. Drenched in jangly pop sensibilities, but with an underlying dark humour, Donny Love make music so fitting for a rock band that grew up a stone’s throw away from one of the trashiest strips in Australia – Cavill Avenue. Their clip for Carnivorous Man is unashamedly bogan, all wife-beaters and VB tinnies, soundtracked by slick, sunny pop. The juxtaposition only furthers an underlying satire about the sexual frustrations, alcohol fueled debaucheries and feelings of claustrophobia from living in an insulated city like the Gold Coast. Or hell, maybe the dudes just like eating chicken and drinking beer.
Carnivorous Man is the first single from Donny Love – a tale of love and lust surrounding a young man and woman, told through tormented humor and, well, just plain weird imagery: “Cos you were falling in love and he kept it discreet/ And you thought you smelled romance in the air but he just smelled raw meat.”
It’s an age old story spun through a demented web and spat out the other side, slightly skewed, slightly wrong, but still so relatable. The track is a sunny rumble, with jangly acoustic guitars caressed by singer Andrew Hodges’ crooning vibrato. There is something reminiscent of the early singles from Millions in there: a little bit of British indie – think The Libertines or The Kooks – dressed in an Akubra and a blue Bonds wife-beater.
The clip is filtered through a drunken, fish-eyed haze – only adding to the sleazy vibe of the lyrics – as it follows the band’s members and friends running amok in their backyard. They drink VB and rip at chicken meat, they bash KFC buckets and pour VB on each other and it’s all pretty fun. It’s when your focus slides from the clip to the lyrics that the whole thing starts to make you feel a little queasy, and that the band are trying to say a bit more. That’s when it all starts to actually seem pretty clever.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/211908431″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
