The first thing one must know about “The Garbage and The Flowers” is that we’re talking about a single group here, rather a tour by Garbage and the earliest version of Icehouse, although that would be a pretty awesome in its own right. Instead, the title comes from the Leonard Cohen poem-then-song “Suzanne”, about his deep friendship with dancer Suzanne Verdal. He obviously thought quite highly of her:
Suzanne takes you down to a place by the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever
And the sun pours down like honey on Our Lady of The Harbor [referring to “La chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours”]
And she shows you where to look amid the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
The evocative juxtaposition has been adopted by these “Castlemaine-based NZ underground pop/noise rock/folk legends” (their description) who have been sporadically been performing and releasing since the early 1990s with Yuri Frusin and Helen Johnstone as consistent members. It is necessary to avoid a hagiographic review of their material or influence. Others have described the group as “the definition of underground”, which one can imagine would raise an eyebrow from Dostoevsky, let alone genuinely underground Soviet-era samizdat bands like Kino.
To be fair, the band uses instrumentation and performance that is democratic. “Stoned Rehearsal” (2011) or “The Deep Niche” (2016), as examples, are honest descriptions of their style. There is no pretence or even much of an attempt at artistry, orchestration, or fidelity, with the quasi-organisation that one encounters in garage-band performances across much of the developed world. Whilst your reviewer can appreciate this slacker implementation of the punk DIY ethos, musically it is not something that I’ve particularly cared for.
However, their latest EP, “In Valhalla” (2023) is really something quite different to prior offerings. The opening track “Wildflower”, with its combination of electronica and semi-acoustic material really does sound like a serious offering in the style and psychedelic progression of “The Velvet Underground”, complemented with charming lyrical simplicity. This is followed by “Valhalla’s Lost in Space” which is grungy and hazily dissonant without being grating, the analogue-synthesiser sound completed with melodic vocals replete with blunt drug references. The third track, “Make it Up” provides gentle semi-acoustic guitars with echoing vocals and a rhythm that, once again, harkens to “The Velvet Underground” (in this case, “I’ll Be Your Mirror”). Finally, the eponymous “In Valhalla” is surprisingly the weakest track on the EP, it’s fine, but leaves no lasting impact.
Having provided as much as one can possibly can for the background and assessment of a four-track EP, your reviewer was pleased to see the opportunity for a relatively rare local performance. Cramming three-score low-key and deliberately modest fans into a charmingly shoebox-sized North Fitzroy pub, the band performed admirably with a frankly superb sound and volume (too easy to get wrong in such a confined space). In fact, they even sounded better than many of their studio albums and achieved some beautiful choral elements, albeit with plenty of time in their intervals. It is true that they didn’t exact put on an overly enthusiastic stage performance, but they’re not trying to be rock gods and it really was in the style of their phlegmatic audience.
It seems to this critic that they really have found some flowers among the garbage. And, in their own way, I am sure that they are doing it with more than a hint of romance and not just for fun.
Leave a Reply