I first saw Shady Nasty play at The Landsdowne in 2018.
It was for a friend's birthday (potentially a tenuous friend, can’t remember) and most of my friends were going less for the music, more for a (again, potentially tenuous) friendship connection with one of the band members. I thought they sounded kind of like Death Grips; more a reflection of my reddit-ified music taste than the aesthetics of the band themself. But it was an observation rooted in something, a degree of awe – wait, there are bands like this in Sydney?
People mosh at Shady Nasty shows – the band aren’t quite ‘punk’ though, never thrashing or chugging consistently, but swaggering, lurching with jagged, staccatoed bursts. They’re ‘experimental’ but not inaccessible, and completely unpretentious: the Nautica caps, the slang, the car references are all genuine, decidedly unironic. As I waited outside after the show, the band loaded their gear into an overcrowded car backseat – the same vintage Volvo on the cover of their debut single, ‘Jewellery.’ Then, exactly like that very image, they pulled out onto City Road, ripped a massive burnout, and sped away into the night.
Shady Nasty spares a thought for the middle class adlay; less jumping trains, more drifting souped up Skylines down Parra Road. With a sincerity to their hallowed idols, too, “You've never seen a case of Monster cans / On the backseat’. The band's visual design has a zoomer surrealism to it: Snapchat filters, CCTV footage and Adobe Illustrator-metaness examining a judgement-free understanding of Australian suburbia. Not unlike David Lynch, overexposing almost towards parody, but actually maxxed out right at the edge of sincerity, revealing its truest, most realest nature.
On the bill that night at The Lansdowne were Slim Set and Behind You. It was an exciting time in Sydney music, bold and creative despite lockout law grey-skies. That weather changed, but the hangover still persists to an extent; it’s seven years later and out of those three, only Shady Nasty have released a full length record (even then, it took them seven years). That album, TREK, is soundtrack to the highways of the harbour city; the pains of toil, pedal to the medal with “Chrome on my lips”, no road to Valhalla in sight, only the never-ending bend of the M5 as company.
In 2018 I’d just started volunteering at fbi. At that gig I was still shuffling somewhat uncomfortably between slowly-straying-away school friends, and this new, exciting world of clouted personalities and esoteric tastes. A young person angst known intimately to Shady Nasty, on TREK, like previous releases, they diagnose its roots to a confused sense of self; exploring how that sense of self is perceived by others (be it family expectations or friendships) or dressed up (be it G-SHOCKs, gym gains or gilded rims).
Shady Nasty’s representation of masculinity is a dynamic one; its most obvious expression is of it as a mask. You could look at the band's devoted, always sold-out crowd with a degree of ironic detachment: violently slamming around, schooner clutched tightly in their right hands, left arms outstretched with fists stiffly pumped in rhythm to every shouted (not really sung) lyric. Clearly it means something though – Shady Nasty cuts right on the nerve on the particulars of a tortured, self-flagellated, ‘gotta be hardstyle’ masculinity, “And I’m f**kin’ fiending ‘till it gets on boost / Leaving everything behind / And that’s the best part of this tired grind.” And, like – why not brah? Have you seen this city after all?
Still, there sometimes comes the crash. TREK soundtracks the long journey back, grappling with that ‘maybe I had too many Vs and my heart is about to explode out of my chest’ feeling. Less angry, more mellow – not necessarily a new sound for the band, but a tune-up. Another generation of Sydney royalty, Kim Moyes from The Presets, helps to further bring out Shady Nasty’s sense of space and atmosphere, and highlight all the bands weird and wonderful production quirks: like the guitar and ambient noise on ‘SCREWDRIVA’, satisfyingly similar to its very name sake.
‘When it’s done, when it’s gone / Lookin’ back with fondness / But only for a second.” On its face, the opening verse on TREK seems again a curtain of masculine avoidance. But there’s truth in it, too. How do you grow when everything you’re supposed to measure against feels wrong? Sure, reject the white-collar treadmill in the Influencer City, but hooning yourself to death isn’t the answer either. That measurement has to come from within. Maybe it’s a long awaited debut record, or simply just an honest and real conversation with a friend. Those dents and battle scars might hold a sense of nostalgia and pride. But sometimes it's time to give the car a proper clean, to wash away the dirt. Pick yourself up, and start again.
Words by Lindsay Riley