LYDIA LUNCH’S RETROVIRUS: BRISBANE HOTEL, HOBART, 1 MARCH 2020

A thick fug of expectation envelops an audience packed into the gig room of Hobart’s Brisbane Hotel on a rainy Sunday night. It’s the final Australian gig by Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus band. It's likely to be the last Tasmanian performance by an overseas or mainland act for some time given the island state’s move towards Covid-19 lockdown. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1919 was the last time such policy was necessary.

The setlist encapsulates the no wave pioneer’s career in various groups (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, 8 Eyed Spy, her revered collaborations with Rowland S. Howard) as well as tributes to admired precursors. Pere Ubu’s proto-punk anthem ‘Final Solution’ and the glam psych of Alice Cooper’s ‘Black Juju’ sound vital and celebratory in retroviral reimagining. The only thing missing from this set is their sledgehammer version of Suicide’s ‘Frankie Teardrop’. ‘Still Burning’ is dedicated to local hero Howard whose stylistic repurposing of the guitar as sound generator in The Birthday Party is evoked throughout the set via Weasel Walter’s effects layering. The experimental guitarist conjures a funnel of delayed vibrato and feedback during one interlude that could be a wormhole invitation for Lunch’s ideal revenant to sit in.

The rhythm section of bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Bob Bert navigate the transition from surf punk breakdown back to stealth funk noir in ‘Dead Me You B Side’ with impressive finesse. It’s a song made sleek and elegant in its menace by this group in contrast with 8 Eyed Spy’s sludge original. Cyberfunk’s at work here: James Brown’s erotic machinery made angular and osmotic; but its fleshy 70s Miles origins rather than the synthetic odysseys of jungle techno or trip-hop. Reductionist rhythm guitarist Reggie Lucas, master of the strategic chordal stab, and the Henderson/Foster rhythm section navigating the burnout fadeout of Get Up With It‘s ‘Maishya’ or the cavernous slow-mo dub at the center of ‘Calypso Frelimo’. It’s a seam of fusion potential that was mined more in late 70s/early 80s English punk funk than the head dancing of Lunch’s New York no wave partner James Chance. Think the imperialistic motor-skank of PiL’s ‘Careering’ (the superior live version executed by John Lydon’s original Levene/Wobble dream team on Paris au Printemps) mixed with the dub-wise surf punk of The Pop Group’s ‘We Are Time’. It’s a rare alchemy that conjures such a verdant stream of association from 8 Eyed Spy’s primitive grind, and these ‘sonic brutarians’ (to use Lunch’s description of her band) have it in spades.

The American artist has pursued a singular path since the late 1970s as singer, spoken-word and performance artist. The little girl voice, barbed with enchanting irony, that makes her 1980 solo album debut Queen of Siam the most accessible point of entry into her diverse oeuvre has deepened with time into a husky growl. Imagine a higher-pitched Tom Waits (whose ‘Heart Attack and Vine’ she covered for the soundtrack of the 2006 film East of Sunset) etched with, most notably in Big Sexy Noise’s ‘Gospel Singer’, the jagged edges of Janis Joplin. The pride she feels in achieving her ideal vocal form is palpable when she teases the females in the audience. Wouldn’t they like to know how to get one? No way but practice, wayward experience and copious tobacco, girls. The path of originality is seldom a safe one.

Lydia’s voice, like her unique guitar playing in Teenage Jesus has always been a blunt if malleable instrument for psychic surgery. Not for her the searing sonority of fellow Goth rock icon Siouxsie Sioux on ‘Swimming Horses’: a voice that soothes as it terrifies. The cinematic trailer park sex kitten vibe Lunch created on Queen of Siam is nevertheless irresistible on the catchy silliness of ‘Atomic Bongos’, haunting on her fantastic duet with Howard, the 1982 cover of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Some Velvet Morning’ (a song some in this audience probably know her best for). It established a template for riot grrls to follow, but only Jennifer Herrema would take to magical heights of psychedelic derangement on Royal Trux’s Twin Infinitives.

Lunch has continued to meld intimacy and caustic declamation with ever greater affect over prog/jazz/ambient/experimental soundscapes in her ‘illustrated word’ releases, achieving a Burroughsian torch drawl on the 2016 release My Lover the Killer with Marc Hurtado and her 2018 Sadean tribute Marchesa with Stefano Rossello. It would be churlish though to express a preference for this avant-garde spoken-word direction to Lunch as rock singer given how much she owns songs as disturbing and revealing as ‘Mechanical Flattery’ on stage. It’s not just dynamic self-assurance. She’s also backed by musicians who are longtime friends more than just collaborators.  Weasel Walter in particular is a true believer, studying the specific microtonality of the clusters she employed in Teenage Jesus with the diligence of a PhD musicologist investigating the tonal dynamics of an Earle Brown string quartet.

Another of her collaborators, Eugene S. Robinson of avant-blues outfit Oxbow, defies stereotypical notions of ‘soul’ technique and all its signifying coloratura for black artists with the same virulence as she does with preconceptions of the feminine voice. Both express an abject performative sexuality, but tonight’s performance is not one of emotional extremes. The predominant mood, discernable in Lunch’s witticisms as much as Weasel’s hardcore guitar heroics, is one of fun despite the darkness of the lyrical material. A phalanx of her rowdier female fans at the front of the stage helps keep the mood relaxed. To adopt a Venn diagram meme argot, everyone’s partying like it’s ((Covid-(19)(19)99)).

© Text & Photos Copyright Jon Kromka 2020