Sydney punks Party Dozen (Kirsty Tickle and Jonathan Boulet) have released their new album Crime In Australia via GRUPO.
“We wrote Crime in Australia between November 2022 and December 2023 in Marrickville,
Sydney, Australia.
“Marrickville in the 1960s-70s was a notorious crime hot spot. If a car was stolen, or someone was missing, they’d look for them in Marrickville. Since then the area has been highly gentrified and slowly the once grimy industrial warehouse lined streets are being swapped for monstrous apartment blocks with palm trees.
“We began without any theme in mind, just the beginnings of some song ideas. As we were discovering the songs for this album each song felt more and more at home in an old cop tv series’ soundtrack. The Crime theme quickly became apparent.
“A couple years ago I began stealing back the blue pearl fibreglass drum kit my parents bought me when I was 10 years old (in an attempt to curb my hyperactive naughtiness). I had sold it to a friend who had subsequently left it scattered around various friends’ houses. It felt right that the drum kit had come full circle and back into my possession so we decided to record the whole album with it. The kit was owned by an old jazz drummer who had served in WWII and some years after he passed, his friend sold it to my parents.
“The record feels split into two contrasting sides. The first half is ‘order’, being as listenable as Party Dozen has ever been. Each song is law abiding and dignified in its own place. The second half is ‘disorder,’ becoming more unlawful, unhinged, louder and noisier.
“We recorded each jam live in our 12 sqm studio room face to face with each other. There’s lots of drums in the sax and there’s lots of sax in the drums.”
Release: September 6th, 2024, GRUPO Records