THE GALVATRONS – LASER GRAFFITI
Melbourne glam-rockers The Galvatrons are doing for 80s rock what The Darkness did for 70s rock – expert pastiche – which is to say, they don’t really do anything for it at all. The cover of the album is a painting of two black science fiction cubes, crackling with lightning amongst some epic storm clouds, and the disc itself is an old-school silver-and-black job, label logo and track-list, the authentic touch. What you hear when you put it in is, well, a highly produced melange of the following: Van Halen, Devo, Europe, Journey, Boston, Queen, Toto, and it’s probably worth mentioning Van Halen again – big, noise-y synths abound, as if the band is always already about to break into Jump. Lyrically, it’s as inane as it wants to be, songs about saving the world, “we love robots”, girls and lost love, all cribbed from the 80s greats, nothing gained. What The Darkness had that The Galv don’t is the soulful delivery that would make this kind of archive raid acceptable. Laser Graffiti is fun (this kind of thing is always going to be fun, it’s got roto-toms and synth guitar!) but besides the histrionic vocals, all the performance feels quantised and lifeless, a rerun of a rerun, a highly-commercial repackaging of something we’ve got already. It is possible these people are post-modern performance artists, in which case, they’re doing a great job.
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