Beasts of Bourbon
Still Here

Since that October 2, 1983, when it all began with the brief session to record the splendid debut The Axeman’s Jazz, a lot of water has passed under the bridges and Bourbon down the throats of Tex Perkins and company. An endless list of stages trodden and seven studio albums, including this latest one that could be the epitaph for such a super group in which, in the forty years of albeit rarefied activity, some of the best musicians from down-under have either camped out permanently or just stopped by for a quick drink.

After the excellent Little Animals in 2007, the Bourbon Beasts stealthily retreated once again into the mist of the Australian swampland from which they had emerged. But after their reckless incursions, we were used to seeing them disappear for long periods, sated with their prey or, rather, inebriated.

Twelve years after that last appearance, in 2019, like in one of those gothic tales where evil cyclically reemerges, the Beasts reappear but this time without Bourbon. The dark, yet still scorching sun of the Beasts of Bourbon rises again in a mournful and grieving dawn for the loss of Brian Hooper and Spencer P. Jones - taken away by cancer within a few months of each other - leaving Tex Perkins and company reduced to The Beasts.

Still Here. Still here. The title of what is currently the last album of the Beasts of Bourbon or the first of the Beasts, resonates as a defiant cry from the survivors in the face of Fate. And the attitude is always that fierce and ramshackle one of the most venerable and animalistic storytellers of Australia, the same as Iggy Pop and Captain Beefheart, Nick Cave, and Tom Waits. Still Here collects and reinvents the sound elements that made the band what it is, at a moment that makes this album seem like a kind of Irish wake, a lament for the lost comrades. But even if the moment is dark, the overall atmosphere of Still Here is imbued with a black humor and a longing for resistance that makes the album more akin to a raucous celebration of everything the band has always represented, rather than a collection of funeral songs.

Consider that Brian Hooper, six days before he died, wanted to play - though confined to a wheelchair - at the moving concert organized by the Bourbon Beasts to raise essential funds for his care. And Spencer P. Jones - Jonesy as his friends called him - gravely ill, managed to enter the studio in time to give us “At The Hospital”, as moving and disturbing as it is ironic and irreverent.

An album, therefore, by the remaining members of the band, with Kim Salmon and Boris Sujdovic returning to the fold, and with contributions from almost all past and present members of the band, recorded just a couple of weeks after their last concert with Hooper and composed mostly of sketched ideas, improvisations, and two covers, according to the model adopted for the recording of The Axeman’s Jazz in that fateful eight-hour session in 1983, which cost 100 Australian dollars for the studio rental and much more in alcoholic drinks. Jones is there, but as mentioned earlier he will only be on one track.

It starts with the Punk’n’Heavy sound beating of “On My Back” by Tex Perkins and “Pearls Before Swine” by Kim Salmon, both so angry, dirty, desolate, and fierce as to knock out without killing. Worthy additions to the setlist are the covers of Warren Zevon, “My Shit’s Fucked Up” (could there be a more appropriate cover for the Beasts?), as well as the disfigured blues of Zappa's “The Torture Never Stops”, with a thick, dark sound like oil.

One could say that dark ballads like "Just Let Go" by frontman Tex Perkins don’t have the same psychotic deformity of the beginnings, and that “It’s All Lies” and the hilarious, concluding “Your Honor”, sound like underdeveloped ideas, built on two chords. But one could reply that the Beasts, for better or worse, are more mature and that the flip side is the dark and hypnotic spoken of “Don’t Pull Me Over” which still effectively explores the border between avant-garde and primordial rock’n’roll, distantly related to Springsteen’s Nebraska. "Drunk On A Train" is cheeky garage rock that will keep you tapping your foot and shaking your butt even after silence has fallen. “What The Hell Was I Thinking”, written by Hooper, sounds like a late-night Rolling Stones jam, with the burning electricity of the slide and acoustic guitars weaving a drunken dance and Perkins bemoaning his misdeeds with his marvelous country werewolf howl.

But the peak of the record is the slow, swampy blues of "At The Hospital", where we find - for the last time - Spencer P. Jones, with his typically loose tone, ironically sharp and incredibly dark, chuckling to himself sadly.

Still Here is an imperfect album and these, as much as we’d like them to be, are not the Beasts of Bourbon. To be so, Jonesy’s guitar should be on every track! And yet, Still Here is a true rock’n’roll record. Devastating, dirty, fun, and even a bit unsettling. And that is all we want from the Beasts. This is not a reinvention of rock’n’roll. It is a celebration. It is a group of musicians who realized, at a difficult and painful moment, that they wanted to continue making music together even to honor those who left their drinking companions and went to drink elsewhere. Permanently.

We do not know if Still Here will remain the last album from these Australians who, since “Psycho”, have accompanied myself and many others throughout much of our lives. We can, however, say loudly and with shared pride that the Beasts, graying, wounded, embittered - no matter how it goes - are still here and, despite everything, still with their bottle of Bourbon.