A bit over 10 years ago, SPOD released Taste The Radness, a swaggering mess of apocalyptical macho electronic, a soundtrack you could set to early Maddox. The album struts around, with the gait of a juiced-up muscle mass of low self-esteem who forsakes every leg day ever, showing everyone who doesn’t care its imaginary beachballs and gun show tickets. Although, it does this in a bit of an outdated way – no one says ‘rad’ anymore.
We’re giving away a couple of super exclusive cassettes thanks to SPOD and the wonderful people at Rice is Nice. Email [email protected] to win!
A decade on, and SPOD, muscled-no-more, is spending his time whittlin’ away in Brooklyn (this Brooklyn not that Brookyln), getting nostalgic for the world he grewed up in and that done gone by, rocking back and forth on the southbound peak-hour trains that ferry the best and brightest of Blacktown-by-the-Sea to their jobs. SPOD has had to fall back in line with grey of life, riding the money-spinning underwater exercise bike to keep his head above water, all in an environment endorsed and cultivated by kids brought up on destructive, obsessive dedication and entitlement as they ride rings on jet skis gifted to them at birth around poor SPOD’s naked, struggling head. He thought he’d smashed lyf head-on with a heartful of hedonism. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be SPOD, it wasn’t meant to be.
And so, lamenting the ocean between his lifestyles, past and present, SPOD has released a new album, the retrospective A Taste of Sadness. SPOD’s new album mirrors the old. There’s ten tracks on each, and every title on Sadness is the despondent half of the song on Radness: Letz Dance is now Last Dance; Devistator is now Devastated; 2131 (Ride Wit’ Me)’ is now 2083 (Cry With Me)’; and so on.
As might be expected, Sadness is far more down tempo than Radness. While Radness shared sonic similarities with its convergent peer Electric Six’s comedy electrics, Sadness shares the sombre mood and sounds of John Grant’s raw autobiography Pale Green Ghosts. For instance, the opening tracks are metonymical; Letz Dance shooting off for all three minutes and twenty-two seconds of its existence, whereas Last Dance lumbers along, full of regret. The lyrics, for instance in So Lonely, are also far more pedestrian and pathetic, with the coughing-neé-crying at the end of that song being sadly hilarious.
Apart from the retrospective album being a pretty cool idea, Sadness is an enjoyable comedy music album. As the maxim goes, a good comedic song has to be a good song to be believable. This was the ceiling that Spinal Tap wonderfully cracked, and SPOD meets. Although if there is to be a criticism, SPOD doesn’t reach the lols bar set by the progressively ridiculous Spinal Tap’s Stonehenge (“We don’t know who they were or… what they were doin’…”) or R. Kelly’s redefining Trapped in the Closet Chapter 9.
Thanks to the wonderful people over at Rice is Nice, we’ve got a couple of SUPER EXCLUSIVE cassettes to give away of SPOD’s Taste The Sadness, perfect for all the kids these days, what with their walkmans and their boom boxes and their ’86 Toyota Camry’s.
These cassettes are from a super limited run and are a classic piece of Spodabelia – a real collectors item, something to pass down to your grandchildren. Based off this amazing article writen by the Spoderman himself, we were gonna run this amazing competition where we get you to send in photos of some of the saddest places around your neck of the woods. Then we’d publish the best ones on the site, get some awesome reader interaction, get a whole bunch of ad revenue and send a couple of tapes out to the winners…
But who can be bothered doing that, right? We’ve got two cassettes to give away and all you gotta do is email your full name to [email protected] with the subject heading “SADNESS” to go in the draw.
SPOD’s album tour will stop by Sydney University’s favourite beer and schnitzel dispensary The Lansdowne – totally free (if you RSVP), as well as the Old Bar, which also serves beer, not sure about schnitzels though. Tour dates below:
Friday, September 19 | The Lansdowne, Sydney, NSW | [free with RSVP, w/Justin Heazlewood]
Friday, September 26 | The Old Bar, Melbourne, VIC | w/ Justin Heazlewood + Alex Cameron]
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