Clubfeet

It’s hard to walk when you have a club foot. It’s hard to record someone’s words when your phone connection is fuzzy (Oh, and you lost your recorder) “Pull it Together” comes on the stereo and I promise I will.

My introduction to Clubfeet was their first single, “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It)” from their debut album, Gold on Gold. The Melbourne trio acquired inspiration from the glorious movie, Heathers—much to my delight. Overall, however, it seems the band is influenced mostly by The Baha Men’s cover of “Hakuna Matata,” proposes singer/synth player/hand-clapper Monty Cooper. The Baha Men have been mentioned in several interviews before and I’m not sure if it’s just to trick readers into YouTubing the band to see if the song is of any merit (nope!), or if Cooper believes that repeating such claims will sound impressive (definitely!). I’m curious to see if the bands will get to collaborate in the future as Cooper says he hopes.

Clubfeet don’t do band things the normal way – if there is one. They started up within the past year and did not start performing locally: “Our first ever gig was in London and then our second gig was in a castle in Cape Town,” Cooper recalls. “We sat down to do a record in a quick period of time and pretty much when we finished it, one of the songs got picked up by MTV in Europe for the MTV Europe Music Awards so we got flown over to play a bunch of shows and parties and stuff. So this has all happened in like the last five months!”

Within the last five days, however, before I talked with Cooper, an hour from his city, fires had destroyed everything in the deadliest fire in history. “It’s right next to where we are,” he shares, “The epicenter of the fires is called Kinglake and it’s about an hour out of Melbourne. I went out with some of my bandmates and my sister on Saturday, because we were looking at buying a bush block in the National Park to build a studio and art space. It was the hottest day ever recorded in Victoria, which is the state we’re in. We left this town about 3pm and at about 4pm, the whole town got flattened by fire. I filled up my petrol tank at about 3pm and at 5:30pm, the service station exploded!”

Smokey pleasure is made to sound enticing on “D.I.E.yuppiescum” and I’m basically breaking out the pom-poms when the song’s title is chanted out. If Gold on Gold is an instructional pop album, I feel like I’ve been educated by Hot Chip, The Teenagers, Air and Broken Social Scene. Thank you, Clubfeet.

For now, check out Kap10Kurt’s remix of “Teenage Suicide” on myspace.com/clubfeetband and hope and pray that after the band’s European tour mid-2009, they make it over to North America.

Words: Natalie Vermeer
Illustration: Jesse Williams www.jessewilliams.ca