The Saints

Howling (Amsterdamned)
by Nik Rainey

Moving on a few years and a hemisphere over to the most Stooge-friendly island in the world, we find one of Australia’s seminal punk bands, so seminal they still looked like hippies. In 1977, The Saints recorded the surprise hit single “(I’m) Stranded,” a song that would have been a great mainstream pop number if it hadn’t been laid down on equipment that consisted of tin cans, rubber bands and sheep dip, like most Aussie records of the time. The resulting ruckus positioned them at the vanguard of the new punk explosion, even though the album that followed, named for the single, mined a fairly-pure vein of derived sound, topped off by an Elvis cover (“Kissin’ Cousins”) that’s silly but not altogether irreverent. Their second album, Eternally Yours, is both punkier in its cynicism (“Know Your Product,” “This Perfect Day”) and slicker in its approach, using full horn sections and more ambitious arrangements to underscore the dragstrip blare of the guitars and the refined bawl of Chris Bailey. As a result, it’s even better, a vital extrapolation of the snotty essence of Stones-style rock at a time when that band was too busy getting busted and inventing the two-headed rock/disco monster to notice. (Bonus tracks on the Amsterdamned reissues include a nervy bash at Ike and Tina’s bombasterpiece, “River Deep Mountain High.”) And hell, while you’re at it, check out the new album by the latest manifestation of the Saints, Howling (also on Amsterdamned) – only Bailey remains from the original lineup and the modernized sound is a far cry from the enlightened primitivism of the Ed Kuepper days, but it comes a damn sight closer than some of the neutered pabulum-platters Bailey churned out in the ’80s under their name.