It's always terrible when something showing promise is cruelly cut down before it's even reached its' prime, but one assumes TOUNGUES' debut album "Ugly" will become their one and only release because their singer/ guitarist/ on-record drummer and all round feisty personality Cate Dahl tragically committed suicide just prior to what should have been the release of this record in the summer of 2004.
So it's difficult not to finally hear "Ugly" without shadows hanging ominously over its' dirty punk rock grooves and fatalistic meanings springing from some of Dahl's already nihilistically-leaning lyrics. But regardless of this, "Ugly" remains a dark, thrillseeking garage-rock album of some quality and one which will inevitably help build a myth of sorts after the fact.
Aside from Dahl, Tongues featured co-songwriter/ guitarist Dave Reynolds and fellow six-stringer Kinnon Holt. Live they also featured two extra members (Brad Kimber on drums and bassist Martin Carr), but on record Dahl herself dealt with the nasty, subterranean basslines and the heavy, steamhammer drums. Legend has it that Tongues actually paid their next door neighbours to take a fortnight's holiday as they laid down the tracks in their Sydney dwelling, but the end results suggest this was money well spent for "Ugly" is mostly as uncompromising and engaging as its' title suggests.
Opener "Peculiar" gives you some idea of what to expect, driven on by Dahl's cave(wo)man drumming, guitars like car crushers grinding into life, industrial strength hippo-breaking-wind basslines and Dahl's sucked/n'compressed vocals. The effect is sleazy and disorientating, and while the reference points are relatively obvious (Stooges, JAMC, Thee Hypnotics etc) there's something creepy and goose-pimply about Tongues that was entirely their own.
And they continue to hold you attention as "Ugly"s intense plot is gradually played out. Often, Dahl sounds impossibly sultry and sleazy like on the visceral'n'hypnotic likes of "Dead Man Walking" and the predatory "Go Your Way" (with its' evilly direct, Ramones-style chorus of "Don't want you/ Don't need you/ 'cos I had you"), while the molten headrush of songs like "Something Passionate" and "Velveteen" are good enough to enter the canon of immortal Australian garage punk as portrayed by the likes of The Lime Spiders and Radio Birdman.
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Admittedly it's nigh-on impossible to ignore the dissatisfaction in Dahl's voice as she rages against the dying of the light on songs like "Dazed" (sample lyric: "You can bite the hand that feeds, and if you can cut at the wrist it bleeds/ but can you beat them at your own game?") and the swaggering, desperate "Wanna-Be" where she hits out at "bullshit conversations/ plastic people, shallow aspirations". Yet such nihilism only adds a further frisson of danger and - crucially - Tongues were big enough to ally these dark thoughts to hipswingin' tunes ("Velveteen" is anthemic enough to almost rival Oasis at their punkiest) or give in to quirky invention as they do with the electronic blips puncturing "B-Side" and the hijacking of The Cure's "Why Can't I Be You?" for the celebrity-addled burn-out of "Be You".
They leave us in typically forboding form with the lypnotic, angular and spookily compelling "Telektanon" where Dahl pointedly sings "It's not forever, but it's today...I'm not leavin' til I'm done". The portents are almost overwhelming and the track itself spirals off into feedback of a Sonic Youth nature at around the 4 minute 45 mark, but by then "Ugly"s done more than enough and you'd hardly expect them to leave us bathed in aural comfort anyway. By the time it finally lets up, you're drained, yet strangely exhilarated too.
Of course, ultimately the personal tragedy of Cate Dahl's premature demise far outweighs mere artistic considerations, but "Ugly" nonetheless suggests Tongues were forked and dangerous and could have injected the some startling poison into rock's bloated corpse had they survived. Whichever way you slice it, it's a waste.
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