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Reviews I-94 Bar Sydney, Australia.
Mainman Link McLennan - aka Link Meanie of hyperactive pop-punkers The Meanies - has a musical track record longer than an identity thief’s credit card receipt trail, and his output’s marked by a sense of wacky quaintness or sheer oddity. There’s plenty off-the-wall weirdness going down on “Shoot The Messenger” - “Jesus Versus The Id” might be the strangest moment, lyrically speaking - and you’d be well advised to avoid the brown acid when within earshot of most of this. “Shoot The Messenger” is first and foremost a guitar album with strong ‘60s overtones. Link’s vocal is placed slightly back in the mix so his playing and that of lead guitarist Kieran Clancy is thrown into relief. Guest keyboardist Nick Finch adds textures and trimmings to neat effect. Love-like opener “Camera Fizz” reverberates like the best West Coast psych before falling down a burrow of tangled guitars to leave just a metronomic signal fade-out. “Black Curse” sounds like a heavier Creation while the stately yet searing album centrepiece, “The Seratonin Sea”, takes the raunch ‘n’ fuzz a step further in the psychedelic stakes. “The Harvester” sounds more like the death march of a thousand scarecrows than a happening time down on the farm with a skittish beat dragging it on through a keyboard-studded field. Contrast with the warbling instro funk of “Hunted God’s Future Shock (Exit Music)” or the Crampsian (and appropriately skeletal) howl of “Shedding The Pounds” and you’ll know the word Variety a whole lot better. The sheer scope of “Shoot The Messenger” is a strength. The closest this album gets to mainstream is the majestic pop of “Crawlin’ Round The Cellar” which was unsurprisingly promo’d to radio, but a fair and just world would also see “Look Out, Body Snatchers!” and “The Seratonin Sea” given AM airtime. Who cares if his neighbours think Link and his mates are weird? Celebrate uniqueness and buy it twice. - The Barman
IN PRESS SINGLE REVIEW Double A-sides are too few and far between, so thanks for the Bakelite age for fulfilling my quota this week – if the creepy garage of “Crawlin’ round the cellar” is not to sir/madam’s liking, perhaps the gloomy glory of “The Harvester” (my personel pick) will suffice. The latter is a deliciously dour slab of mid 80’s dark electro something (bonus points for the line, “Trapped just like Tron”) and a nails down blackboards fuzzed out solo of awesomeness. by Clem Bastow
Adelaide Advertiser
The Bakelite Age
TheDwarf.com.au It's hard to believe that a record this good was written in Sunbury. Sure, for some of those dedicated to the preservation of inanity it's observed as the birthplace of the Ashes, but since Thorpie and the Aztezs last stormed the stage it has become an infamous bogan stronghold. Enter Link McLennan, nee Meanie, and his cohorts. Having already built a solid reputation for themselves with a couple of good records and a fine live show they have really got it right with Shoot the Messenger. Opener Camera Fizz sets the scene with overtones of 60's L.A. psych a la The Seeds and Love - a cautionary tale of the flimsiness of constructed realities with a great vocal melody and a sweetening of slide towards the end, this is a great first track, perhaps the album's best. New drummer Lochie Cavigan makes his presence felt with some nice Keith Moon-esque drumaggedon, and it should be noted that his addition to the band has greatly bolstered it's power and projection. The slide guitar comes to the fore again in the Stones-y Psychic Mess, and Mandrill Daze changes things up with a muted synth intro that, even when the band kicks in, sounds a bit like Toto. That they manage to do this and remain palatable is testament to how good this band really is. The chorus is yet another lush grouping of minor changes, a hallmark of Link's songwriting. He is a true original, with a melodic sensibility all his own, and manages to find hooks in the strangest musical places. The careful layering of guitar on the album lends these minor excursions a harmonic richness, like a darkside Beatles with the heft of the 70's era Who. Things get rockin' with Black Curse, its riff attack thickened with a slathering of organ. Many of the songs are bolstered by keyboard textures, and the presence of a keyboard player onstage at the launch of this album could point to this being a permanent addition to the Bakelite pallete. The marching (Everybody Knotws It's A) Crying Shame continues the 60's psych theme, the vocal melody twisting over itself like a mobius strip, and the freakout gets some cathedral reverb treatment in the Cramps-y Shedding the Pounds. Tying the album together (there is a reference to such a locale in Camera Fizz) is the dreamy The Serotonin Sea, which bursts from a verse redolent of Incense & Peppermints into a descending fugue-like chorale which erupts further into a blazing fuzz guitar solo. It's pop Jim, but not as we know it - The Bakelite Age take all that is good about the music of the 60's and 70's and project it into the present moment. The pounding riffage of Look Out Body Snatchers is followed by the single Crawlin' Round The Cellar, the chorus of which is yet another weird minor mobius melody that somehow comes off more like the ultimate druken pub sing-a-long track - think Wire's I am the Fly. Beers akimbo. The Harvester again brings to mind Chairs Missing with its synth-heavy textures, until such a time as the Zappa-esque marimba comes in to punctuate the chorus; it's the longest track on the record and quite different from the rest of it, the tone more sci-fi. The religious references roll on with the swinging Jesus Versus The Id which describes the great battle for the hearts and minds of men, encapsulated in the lyric: It's just like Days Of Our Lives/When I'm about to switch off/Something happens that I don't expect. Get out more, dude. But seriously, another big chorus, another reason to buy this album. The fun winds up with the weird electro-psych of Hunted God's Future Shock (Exit Music), Link wailing away on fuzz guitar over a loopy dance beat. It is without contest the least awesome thing about this album, but as there are an abundance of awesome things presented within the effect is minimal - despite the experimentia Don't Shoot The Messenger is more cohesive than their last effort, the production bringing out the best in the compositions. This band gets better with every gig and anyone with an ear for good rock music should check them out. by Snaggletooth
Mess & Noise - Australia This is the fourth full-length installment in Link “Meanie” McLennan’s ongoing attempt to reshape or at least redefine the outside world according to his own private mental map. From his rural retreat outside Melbourne, McLennan surveys the landscape, taking notes, imagining connections, before setting it all down in explosive musical form, aided and abetted by his three trusty cohorts in the Bakelite Age. As with their last album Return Of The Magical Molerat, he’s also been allowed to do some backseat driving on the production too, behind Spooky maestro Loki Lockwood. McLennan has a knack for coining surreal, stick-in-your-head song titles, and you could construct an interesting random narrative just by glancing at the back of the CD – a jumble of cursed mandrills sailing the serontonin seas, fighting Jesus and bodysnatchers, perhaps? – before you even get into the finer detail of the lyrics lurking inside. But that’s only part of the whole deal, of course. It’s not a spoken-word album, so these images are locked to music. Locked tight, and to some mighty fine music to boot. There’s plenty of the band’s spiky, punky guitar rock on offer, but they take the opportunity to pursue some other, more diverse directions. Opening track ‘The Camera Fizz’ plays a classic loud/soft game, with McLennan letting howls loose a scant 30 seconds in. Later, the medium-paced ‘Crying Shame’ is built on classic ’60s psychedelia, while ‘Shedding The Pounds‘ is a slinky sprawling mass of funked-up fuzz guitar over a barebones rhythm track. It would be the perfect soundtrack material for a ’70s biker porn flick. When an act has been around for a while it’s sometimes easy to take them for granted. The Bakelite Age have done their share of the hard yards, but Shoot the Messenger proves they can still come up with the goods. by Trevor Block
InPress - Melbourne Garage rock in all it's glory, Shoot the messenger captures the spirited eccentricity of early Hoodoo Gurus with the raucous noise of the Powder Monkeys. Yep, The Bakelite Age have recorded another jaffa. Formed by main Meanie Link Mclennan in 2003, this is the third full length release from the Melbourne four piece outfit and it's infectious ride around the thrills and spills of rock's joyously demented edges. Underpinned by a thumping rhythm section (Fiona Ely on bass, Lochie Cavigan on drums), this album is drenched with guitars; deliciously off-kilter and fat chops complimented by alternating squealing lead breaks and neat little runs from Kieran Clancy. Eight months in the making, it sounds like it was recorded in somebody's lounge in a single take-and that is one hell of a nod of approval. Raw, catchy, impulsive and way too much fun, shoot the messenger is simply a must listen. Of note, there is some genuine pop sensibility here (inadvertantly or otherwise. The driving bass and recurring lead riffs of "(Everybody knows it's a) Crying shame" just propel the tune into next week. Cleverly, Mclennan's vocals are not pushed to the forefront, meaning the buzzing guitars can weave and clash and spin to heart's content and the lyrics can take some figuring out later- and oh boy, they're worth the effort. Harmonies abound, adding resonance and on the delightfully ragged cake. The material offers up reverb heaven (Shedding the pounds), demented fuzz pop (The serotonin sea) and trashy slices of punk attitude (look out body snatchers!) There are hooks and tempo changes from all angles, keeping the listener on edge and wondering what the hell is coming next. This is an inspired effort; 40 minutes of locally-produced music that will never grow old. E.J. Cartledge Beat Magazine
When he
formed The Bakelite Age, Link McLennan (nee: Meanie) was striving for a
particular sound – an aural aesthetic that wasn’t as adolescent and acerbic as
The Meanies, nor twee in the style of the Tomorrow People. A mixture of jarring
melodies, syncopated rock beats, wry social commentary and laced with McLennan’s
crystal-threatening vocal incisions, trying to find a neat descriptor within
which to locate The Bakelite Age is akin to shoving a dodecahedron into a
rotating ellipsis.
Spooky026 The Bakelite Age - Return of the Magical Molerat 
Reviews
The Age 'EG'
Put a gang of Melbourne rockers together in a room and it's fairly certain the following will happen: the town's grog supplies will take a big hit, and some good music will emerge. The stuff being set down by Link "Meanie" McLennan and the Bakelite Age this time around is decidedly good, substantial and swinging, tight without sounding constipated. Along with being in first-rate form on vocals, McLennan brought a terrific batch of songs to the party. Like grabbing a handful of mixed salted nuts, the 11 tracks are deliciously varied but uniform in their hard-edged, swaggering approach, showing the kind of innate pop smarts and love of a stomping rock groove that informs the best work of Josh Homme. It helps that the combined CVs of the quartet read like a festival poster, with past outfits including Snout, the Breadmakers, Dan Brodie, Shutdown 66, Dung and, of course, the Meanies, to name just a few. With song titles such as Feast of the Porcupines, Brotherhood of the Bowel and the title track, and cryptic lyrics to match, you get the idea this isn't all in deadly earnest. Indeed, it's a bunch of fun. Jeff Glorfeld Beat Magazine The fact Link McLennan (neé Meanie) chose to call his band The Bakelite Age results in something of a misnomer. The Bakelite Age is as synthetic as a century old Cedar tree, and as flimsy as a Roman aqueduct built by a bunch of toga and sandal wearing slaves. Sure, there's some jagged edges to the music that you could associate with nasty shards breaking off a length of over stressed bakelite, but that's just rock'n'roll.The Return of the Magical Molerat is the Bakelite Age's first release on Spooky Records. McLennan was apparently very satisfied with the sound he found on the band’s previous records – heavy, grinding guitars, thundering beats, punctuated with angular guitar moments so disfiguring they should reside in a rock'n'roll freak house – and it continues to form the basis of the Bakelite Age attack (I Was a Teenage Messiah being the prime illustration). But on the opening (and best) track, Good Love (In the Eye of a Hurricane) and Guy Fawkes Night, the Bakelite Age indulges a tighter variation on McLennan's chosen them. The former tune is the perfect marriage of grinding rock beats and garage noise, the delicate balance between restraint and psychosis consistent with the song's title, while the latter ebbs and flows in form with McLennan's drone and scream dialectic. Along similar, but different lines, Cronos the Killer and Brotherhood of the Bowel are fast flowing rock tracks, straight talking, no bullshit and all the best for it. Tinker Blues starts its short life as a standard garage blues track yet – typically for the Bakelite Age – stumbles on that track like a drunk taking the short cut home along the train line. I don't know what Cooler King is all about (with its chorus of shuzzbutts), but if you close your eyes and sway in unison with the bruising fuzz riff things are just fine, and the pub rockin' country Chocolate Gun is almost worthy of a boogie and dance, if your legs aren't thrown into confusion by the obligatory temporal fluctuations that appear periodically. By the time McLennan gets lost in the mire of his acid infused Wind in the Willows fantasies with Return of the Magical Molerat and Feast of the Porcupines, there's a sense of early twentieth century fiction when the absurd triumphed regularly over plausible narrative. In a strange mixed up way, that battle lies at the grinding heart of the Bakelite Age. PATRICK EMERY I-94 Bar Link “Meanie” McLennan seems to have been a fixture on the Melbourne scene for decades. Wait a minute- he has. His good humour and casual attitude to life might just be a clever front for something steely inside- since the demise of former acts the Meanies and the Tomorrow People he’s kept the Bakelite Age on the rails for a few years now, and now they have managed to produce album number two. And it’s excellent. Following a label change from In-Fidelity, this has been recorded & produced by Loki Lockwood, as are so many Spooky releases - and if there’s a better, more sympathetic producer working around town right now I’d like to know who it is. The Bakers (as their friends call them) often seem to be working in a kind of goofy private code, and sometimes the lyrics sound like they were written on acid, but there is no denying the power of this set. Although their name may conjure up images of art deco radios squawking out Rudy Vallee show tunes, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The sound they summon up ranges from fairly standard garage-y rock to a few darker and deeper moments, and there’s a bracket of three tunes planted smack in the middle of this disc that are as strong, catchy and interesting as anything you’ll hear anywhere else this year. “Tinker Blues” is full of clanging off-key chords, but comes together every few bars for the choruses. There’s a lazy loping rhythm to “Cooler King”, which is mostly spoken rather than sung, and “Brotherhood of the Bowel” (no, I don’t know what that is, and I don’t really want to, thanks) is a careering bluesy thing. There’s a lyric sheet/insert to help you decipher what this is all about but frankly I gave up- it’s better to leave it opaque, to snatch a line out here and there where you can- “I feel like Mother Theresa on Guy Fawkes night”, or “ Eeny meeny miney mo, catch a hooker by the toe”, for instance- and just enjoy the squalling of that home made rectangular guitar. TJ Honeysuckle
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