Australia’s momentous punk-rock heavyweights The Meanies have today lifted the lid on details of their forthcoming record, Desperate Measures, while also sharing ‘Cruel To Be Caned’, the lead single from the new album.
Desperate Measures, slated for release in July 2020 via Cheersquad Records and Tapes, marks the first studio album from the band since their victorious 2015 comeback record It’s Not Me, It’s You amassed a slew of standout album reviews across the country and reignited Australia’s longstanding love affair with the influential punk-rock outfit.
According to frontman Link Meanie, the album title Desperate Measures reflects the drastic strides we take to stomach the current state of the world.
“Desperate Measures is an album title for the times, whether it be applicable to the rise of right wing anti-intellectualism, the associated denial of impending environmentally apocalyptic disaster or the cultural lobotomy of today's popular media,” says Link.
It's hard to see a way through this miasma of illogical negativity without… (drum roll)... desperate measures.”
The charging lead single ‘Cruel To Be Caned’ depicts a tale of anxiety, depression and inevitable isolation, and the struggle knowing that such forced expulsion is at once entirely necessary, yet resented. The single also marks as the first time Meanies' bassist Wally Meanie has taken lead vocal on a track.
Arriving with the new single is the video for ‘Cruel To Be Caned’, a kooky horror collage clip produced by Link Meanie himself.
To Meanies frontman Link Meanie, latest single ‘Jekyll and Hide’ depicts a turbulent journey through the shit show of life, while a culture of nauseating superficiality parades on past.
“‘Jekyll and Hide’ is a story about riding a raft of shoddy construction down the river of life,” says Link.
“The river is a torrent of shit, blood and acid and constantly threatens the raft's integrity. To rub salt in the wound, Stepford people race past, laughing on their glistening jet skis and spraying you with the foetid contents. The hard wooden planks of the raft's deck are the enemy of your screaming haemorrhoids. It's a nice day though.”
Accompanying the track is another suitably-freakish animation by Link, only this time, what started as a spoof of a dated animal-pal adventure story fast transformed into a Lord of the Rings / Monty Python saga.
New single ‘Monsters’ marks as one of the more politically charged tracks on the album, detailing how monsters are all around us, constructed by powerful people with dogged agendas.
“Monsters are created as fodder for emaciated egos, created as distractions or tools for politicians to get re-elected. Fuck their idealism; it's the enemy of art and the enemy of us all,” says Link.
“However monsters created, they are a sign that we still have our training wheels on evolutionarily speaking, and need to be hyper aware and super vigilant of our fragile interactions. There are no gods that walk the earth.”
Coming hand-in-hand with the single is another clip by Link, which ties in with the series of animated videos he’s created for the album’s singles. Using archaic technology and a complete lack of tech savvy, Link has managed to cobble together hundreds of frames for the new video, despite many rants and dozens of software crashes.