Spotlight – 29: Kitchen’s Floor

As I said somewhere else just now, I keep forgetting how much I remain in love with the thrill of live music.

Blame it on my age. Whatever. At least I know my limitations. Oh maybe I shouldn’t. Or maybe I don’t. Oh maybe I just want to FUCK AND GET HIGH FUCK AND GET HIGH… I started performing a new lyric last night that started “I want to get hurt/By a girl in a leather skirt” but then realised I really had no place left to go with that. So I shut up. I shut up and started enjoying the sheer quality of sound emanating from another fucking great Brisbane band – Kitchen’s Floor, and even the most cursory of listens at their MySpace page will prove that they’re straddling that rarest of middle grounds: the exact space where Some Velvet Sidewalk, Pounding Serfs, someone way more stripped-back and cowbell-loving than even Italians Do it Better will allow, and The Clean meet. Except not really.

Songs are brutal and short. Songs are brutal and loud. Songs are brutal and pleasingly chromatic. (I use the word chromatic. I’ve never understood what I mean by it within the context I always use it.)

Kitchen’s Floor numbers a great amount (three). Here’s another drummer who never crosses her arms. Here’s another guitar shaken and almost pounded into oblivion. Wait. I realise that I haven’t been giving you the most obvious of reference points. Throw in some – fuck it, what’s that band called again? – Beat Happening. Terrifying Beat Happening, mind you: when they were all cute and Huck Finn smart.

Ah, I’ve got it. Same way Vivian Girls get Ramones the way no band get Ramones since Shop Assistants, Kitchen’s Floor get Nirvana the way no band have got Nirvana since Unwound. Um. That’s way, way off. The comparison no way stands, the way Nirvana were so bastardised by everything that is still going on after. You’ll be thinking they play Motley Crue power rock now, instead of being all Olympia and Dunedin and… no really, you’ll have to ask Steve Fisk the secret. That man knows.

by Everett True

My name is Everett True. I am a music critic. This is what I do. I criticise music. The clue is in my job description – music critic. I do not consider myself a journalist, as I do not research or report hard news. I do not consider myself a commentator as I believe that everyone should be a participant. I criticise people and in return I am not surprised if other people criticise me. It is part of the whole deal of being in the public arena. I am Everett True. Believe in me and I have power like a God. Quit believing in me and I no longer exist.