Food & Ruins, like most of Hot Tubs Time Machine’s music, is a collection of vignettes – or, more accurately, riffs; on certain ideas or conundrums, turned over again and again, every which way.
On ‘Door Spot’, it's a four minute ethical treatise of who, why – or even if? – any of lead singer Marcus Rechsteiner’s friends deserve a guestlist spot to his show. Throughout ‘Biffo’, it’s an honest weighing of having nostalgia for 70s footy that was also recognisably racist and problematic, ‘They never expressed their feelings/They drank too much/They punched each other.’ Humour is the key ingredient to Marcus’ deadpan, yet still passionate, half-sung/half-off the-dome-thought delivery: on ‘Respect the Mixer’ (poking fun at people who sadly don’t), he japes “Hey mixer, have you heard of a guy called Mikey Young?”
Marcus is concerned with the grandest and most important of life experiences, yet also has room for chats about favourite local eats and a cheeky but unironic cover of ‘Love Is In The Air.’ All work through his observational wit; on closing track ‘Marcus’ Brain’ he sings about how his non-verbal learning disorder filters the world he sees through words and phrases.
In instrumentalist Daniel Towmey, Marcus finds his perfect pairing. The instrumentals of Food & Ruins are more stripped back than earlier records; skeletal post-punk drum machines and no-wave bass grooves, pulled from unfinished band sessions from recent years. But they too slowly unspool, revealing new subtle layers; a guitar refrain or synth that accentuates one of Marcus’ punchlines or epiphanies.
On ‘Slippery Slope,’ two guitar lines and a foreboding bass guitar soundtrack another of Marcus’ reminiscences; this time, a memory of his parents warning a young Marcus that his friend stealing a Chupa Chup is the first but inevitable step towards such moral ruin as car theft or being part of a “global drug empire.” But then the second half of the song flips – the next slippery slope is a reckoning that playing music in DIY punk bands, once a “bullshitting” fun activity, has turned into something more serious, and potentially slightly embarrassing: “When I was a teenager I thought, what are 50 years old doing punk music / And now I understand.”
Not that Hot Tubs Time Machine should be embarrassed at all. Food & Ruins solidifies them as one of the best and most unique DIY bands on this continent. They don’t need much to make it work, really – just authenticity, a dash of self-awareness and, most importantly, a boundless joy for life, in all its mundanity and extraordinariness.
Words by Lindsay Riley