Hi, Davey Dreamnation aka Les Fauves here, with a hot-take on the opening track from The Fauves’ third LP, Future Spa.

My first reaction when I heard “Big Brother Age” in my Surry Hills sharehouse back in 1996 was relief.

Relief, first, that the AUD 29.95 I’d just forked out for another Fauves album was totally worth it; and second, that the CD actually played and didn’t skip in the shit-kicked stereo I’d carried from share house to share house for the past five years.

And third of all because “Big Brother Age” is a song that just cruises out of the blocks: finally and for the first time ever, it seemed, the whole band kicked in, immediately: no smart-arse time changes or difficult guitar lines, nothing radical about the tunings by now, just pure, mid-1990s grunge-adjacent rock.

Finally!

Deep bass flourishes at the end of every bar, lyrics that transported me instantly to the backyards of my youth, to virtual late-1970s sun-flared memories of the big brother I never had.

The big brother I never really managed to become.

The little brother I still think of as my peer, sometimes even as my big brother.

“Big Brother Age” is a tabula rasa, a palate cleanser, but a song that only makes sense right after listening to “Everybody’s Getting a 3-Piece Together”. Which, chronologically speaking, it doesn’t quite follow but aesthetically matches: straight-ahead, solid state tones.

A kind of twisted Australiana melded with Kyuss.

It’s a quantum leap from The Young Need Discipline opener, “The Driver Is You”. In fact, the only similarity between the songs is the little harmonies (sung by Doctor?) on the chorus: “The dri-i-i-i-ver is you-ou” and “Tonight everyone/ feels like having fun”.

I love the subtlety of that, the mirror-shades-wearing coolness of brothers living their best lives down by the backyard fence. The cricket pitch crease marked in the dust, the rubber ball.

The way the lyrical point of view switches from little brother to big brother, too. The mini-epic rock-star jams sprinkled throughout the song. That abrupt ending, unity, just as it began.

Childhood closed.

Album well and truly opened. 

This is the text version of my cameo contribution to Episode 93 of Fauves Are the Best People, which you can listen to on Spotify (see below) or wherever you get your podcasts.