The New Christs
Distemper

At the dawn of the '90s, the prophet Sting declared: "Rock is dead." I wonder what Sting has to do with it and whether he ever understood what it means to play rock. While he was busy strolling with a cane in hand like a fine Englishman in New York, in the down under part of the world, a character was shaking the red dust of the Australian bush off his jacket and once again gathering the crew to try to rekindle that sacred flame.

Rob Younger endured a decade looking for continuity in this project since the Radio Birdman returned from England more broke than before and without a future. A long series of 45s ended up directly in the hit parade of myth with different formations that drew from the best names in rock from the land of kangaroos, and then in 1989, the New Christs rose from the grave to chase the merchants from the rock temple. With Jim Dickinson, bassist of the legendary Barracudas, making himself heard (...and man does he make himself heard) and the excellent guitarist Charlie Owen, Rob's voice returned to make our spines tingle over the long haul.

Distemper is the epitome of the rock we love: the kind made of blood, sweat, and dust. You'll find the Gun Club ("Coming Apart") from when "Bad Indian" JL Pierce fearlessly leaped on horseback with a shout and away! The Stooges ("Circus of Sour") with that obsessive pounding, the Cramps ("No way on Earth") with their harder psychobilly twist, Nick Cave's blues with his ballads of death ("The march" and "Afterburn") and the lost Iggy in Europe who begins to pogo again ("The burning of Rome").

There is the summary of so many Australian bands that deserved worldwide success and are only known in legend ("Love is Underground" and "Another Sin") and the garage punk tainted with psychedelia ("There's no time"). And there are those damned Jagger/Richards ("Disconnected") gently drowned in a pool of strangely clear water after a sudden downpour. Lose yourself without any resistance in this last aggressively melodic track that brings everything home, where rock was born and whose walls resonate with echoes of the past.

Those who have tattooed the Radio Birdman logo on their skin, like any good-quality cow grazing in the bush, surely have "Distemper" in their daily feed, and others would do well to plan an expenditure of a few dozen euros from the hay stored in the barn for hard times.

Rock never died, because we are alive and for it to die, people like Sting will have to step over our dead bodies.