Only The Desert Knows

Bluebottle Kiss's lack of recognition was partly due to structural factors, but also due to the game of chance all art must submit itself to.

Over recent weeks I’ve been reengaging with my teenage love for Australia’s – and possibly the world’s – most criminally overlooked band, Bluebottle Kiss. As a Melburnian I don’t usually endorse (or condone) anything that comes from Sydney. As a general rule, Melbourne’s inherent belief that good art cannot possibly comes from a city like Sydney is correct. Yet there are exceptions to every rule. And Bluebottle Kiss are the one exception.

The Portuguese Man O’ War is known in Australia as a Bluebottle; it has an excruciating (and occasionally deadly) sting, and a kiss is – or at least should be – something delicate. It is the dynamic juxtaposition of the band’s name that is reflected in their music – being both highly agitated as well as melodic and tender, often within the same song. It is the band’s fondness for violent changes which most typifies their sound, often leading to a series of musical choices that may bewilder those less inclined towards indie rock’s noisier experiments. Jamie Hutchings – the band’s songwriter – is a man who will write a sparse plaintive lullaby and then perceive its only possible conclusion is to drown it in a pool of feedback.

Such an approach obviously has its limitations in terms of commercial appeal, but what is curious is the lack of traction that Bluebottle Kiss were able to gain within the people who are drawn to this kind of music. Angular, scratchy guitars were the next developmental stage for those whose musical consciousness was raised by Nirvana. Bands like Sonic Youth, Fugazi and even Polvo may not have been hugely popular, but were able to gain decent sized fanbases of those invested in the more adventurous and interesting side of indie rock. Their critical respect also gave them a longevity – with modern dads still trapped in the 90s racking up these bands’ Spotify counts.

It is possible that never knowing where a song may lead – or why it ended up where it did – could prove confronting to some. It makes dancing or even toe-tapping difficult. Convention in music is convention because it aligns with certain inclinations and expectations. Yet to those who find incongruous shifts to be thrilling, Bluebottle Kiss should have been a compelling prospect.

Broadly, there are a pair of structural reasons why neither success nor acclaim failed to happened for Bluebottle Kiss. The first is the obvious isolation of Australia from the drivers of global music exposure. While culturally Australians have an inflated sense of their own global standing – like Ceaușescu convincing the Romanian public that they were the world’s third superpower – the truth is that no-one actually thinks much or cares much about Australia. There have been Australian bands that have gained international attention, but this is only a small percentage of the good music that the country has produced (with the caveat that not all Australian music that has become internationally popular is good).

Alongside this there was also the unique local radio terrain that the band struggled to negotiate – or, more accurately, failed to understand them. In the 1990s Australian popular music radio – regardless of the city – had generally had two or three commercial chart music stations, a bloke-rock station (gender affirmation for the Australian male), a classic hits station, and Triple J – the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s youth station. For an American audience, Triple J is akin to college radio in terms of content, but as a single nation-wide station. The BBC’s Radio 6 Music would kind of be the United Kingdom’s equivalent, although it is a little more adult-orientated.

As an aside, despite the great upheaval of modern technology and the new ways we consume culture, the social framework of these stations is still how I understand the world. In this era of identitarian obsession I maintain that the only way to truly categorise people (or anything really) is via 90s Melbourne radio stations – and every station doubles as an accusation. Culturally, Sydney is a “Fox FM city”, for example, being the juice bar of a city that is it. While Perth would be a “Triple M city”, given that I don’t think there are any women who actually live there.

For an Australian alternative band getting airplay on Triple J was paramount. It was a way to reach enough ears with youthful enthusiasm to be able to drive album sales and concert attendance. As a station with national reach it was an obvious central hub to target. Yet getting played on Triple J also came with a certain stigma – prescribed by those who thought such a thing was incredibly uncool. Once you graduated from “Triple J music” to more sophisticated listening choices looking down on the station became an integral part of your musical and cultural posture.

This affectation is especially pronounced for Melburnians due to the extra element that the city has on its radio frequencies. Alongside the conventional radio stations described above, Melbourne has a number of highly important – and well supported –community radio stations. Community radio may not be unique to the city, but the prominence and impact of Melbourne’s stations is one of the city’s defining features. These stations have maintained their position in the city’s cultural landscape even as technology has revolutionised the music industry.

These stations have no playlists, each show is generally dedicated to a specific genre and presented by people who actually know what they are talking about – marking them as distinct from the vacuous and insufferable “personalities” that host programmes on other radio stations. Due to the knowledge and credibility of specific music show hosts their influence as tastemakers is significant.

This was the second problem Bluebottle Kiss ran into – convincing the hosts of the right shows on Melbourne’s community radio stations that they were both interesting and cool. Yet trying to square the circle of gaining the necessary exposure required on Triple J to make the band viable and impressing people who defined what was cool is incredibly difficult.

An early jangly indie-pop song like Autumn Comes Too Soon was designed to find traction on Triple J, but it hid the true sound and intent of its parent album – Fear Of Girls (particularly the kick in the face of its opener Claim). A song targeted at one particular audience would mislead another. Or mislead both. This would become a tactic the band used frequently, with lead singles often showing the band’s less confrontational and more accessible style. This, however, also failed to find great success with a Triple J audience. Even if Hutchings was quite adept at writing excellent hooks.

Taste in Australia is set from Melbourne because there’s no possible way it could be set from anywhere else. But as you can tell from this tone there’s a great deal of cultural snobbery that comes with it, and a close-mindedness. If you’ve been designated a “Sydney Triple J band” by Melbourne’s tastemakers then Melburnians are not going to make the effort to disavow this perspective.

With the band initially – and very briefly – signed to Sony’s “alternative” label Murmur – and leading with singles that disguised the band’s true nature – this is exactly what happened. Being label-mates with Silverchair meant there was also a great deal of guilt by association, and this was all Melburnians needed to avert their ears. An attitude that was recognised by the band themselves in their song Return To The City Of Folded Arms.

This placed the band in an appreciative purgatory – far too arty and difficult for Triple J, yet wrongly perceived to be some middling, run-of-the-mill major label Sydney band by those who would otherwise been receptive to their sound. For a bit over a decade this is effectively where they stayed – releasing six albums and numerous EPs that would clearly mark them as one of Australia’s most interesting and best bands, but without any recognition of this in terms of either popularity or critical acclaim.

Yet Bluebottle Kiss pose a bigger problem than just their own unfortunate lack of success or respect due to these structural factors. More broadly, they symbolise that the recognition for all forms of art comes down to a certain amount of luck. The quality of one’s work doesn’t guarantee success. Success – as in the ability to gain a decent amount of recognition and earn a living from your work – relies on a lot of random factors going in your favour.

Luck remains one of our great philosophical puzzles. It is seen as something that happens to us. Unpredictable or uncontrollable forces that provide us with fortune or misfortune. Luck can be life altering. Whether bad or good.

We don’t live in a world of pure agency. Our own agency relies on the agency of others. A set of ears that would have understood a band like Bluebottle Kiss working at the right radio station at the right time could have transformed their public reception. This person may have applied for job at said station, but another candidate was preferred. Or someone of influence in the American music industry on holiday in Australia catching a glimpse of the band may have changed their fortunes. This person may have had a last minute change of plans and gone to a different pub.

There are an infinite number of decisions both big and small that effect not only our own lives, but grand historical events. A new book by the social scientist Brian Klass called Fluke examines this phenomenon. How the knock-on effects of random chance is the dominant social force. It is something that we are all often unwitting slaves to.

Of course, a band like Bluebottle Kiss has made choices that can define their luck. A chorus as lilting and gorgeous as Underneath The Pier morphing into a sinister outro of pummelling drums, deep brown noise and piercing feedback is a choice made knowing that many people will find it disconcerting (even though it’s actually awesome). Repurposing that melody could have been the one to gain the band greater recognition.

Yet, to have done so would have undermine what made the band unique. To compromise on one’s art is another choice, but not one that offers the rewards of risk. To compromise is pragmatic, and pragmatism is often a sign of maturity in our politics, but it is not what we should seek and expect from our art. The purpose of art is to challenge and excite – to be spectacular. Music should have ambition for the band and the listener alike. To provoke the random forces of luck.

Yet maybe in doing so Bluebottle Kiss came up against another structural factor – a cultural suspicion of intricacy within the Australian psyche. I’ve written previously about the country’s aesthetic disinterest and its relationship to Australia’s lack of economic complexity. Maybe aural complexity is also something that Australians find difficult to digest? If this is the case Bluebottle Kiss never stood a chance.