To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Australian funk rock outfit Skunkhour will perform their self-titled debut album in full at a special Melbourne show.
Before they take to The Prince Bandroom next Friday, MC Del Larkin took us track by track through the iconic release.
ECHIDNA (ONE)
This always felt like a great opening track, even when we were writing it. It's made for it with the hi-hats starting up solo then moving into the big horn stabs. Rhyme-wise, I loved the cyclical nuggety bass line and copied it straight up.
PULLATICKIN
A slower, slinky groove that felt made to let rip on the superficial nature of Sydney's yuppie/club culture. Little did I know it was only the beggining... The title Pullatickin was actually from the Parliament Funkadelic Thesaurus. We used the old "London’s Burning/nursery rhyme/round" technique for the middle section with all the brass lines.
A COW AND A PIG
A pulsating bass line drives it along and we used a Kalimba thumb piano with tons of reverb on it in the middle eight. The little handheld thing ended up sounding enormous.
HORSE
Another working title that stuck. Love the frenetic punk/funk style. Another filthy slappa da bass line with a doubled up solo from Dean Sutherland. A fairly chaotic irreverent track about S.F.A really.
BOOTY FULL
There were quite a few heavy, musically dense and serious tracks on the album so we just decided to write a simple, straight up funk song. Love the sax solo from a guesting Ross Middleton.
ECHIDNA (TWO)
Another mammalian working title. Basically, Echidna was broken up into three parts because we didn't really have enough songs for a full album so we had to pad out the track listing. Hah.
BACK TO BASICS
Probably the band's favourite/most complete song on the album, along with Do You like it?. Smooth groove, nice changes and structure. Great melody, lyrics and vocal from Aya too. Love the sexy sax solo from Andrew Watson.
THE SHEEP OF SAM CLAM'S DISCO
The biggest and baddest track on the album, guest starring the band's original MC, Alan “Kode" Blue. He smashes his verse on this track. The subject matter came about after I got my head kicked in walking home in Darlinghurst late one night. Warwick's opening guitar riff reminded me of classic '70s cop show themes, hence the title...
FREE MAN
This is one my personal faves. A wicked dark and slinky groove, sweet guitar riff and awesome vocal performance by Aya. We asked legendary keyboard maestro Chris Abrahams from The Necks to play Wurlitzer chords and in one take he slayed it. His performance enhanced an atmospheric but restrained feel.
ECHIDNA (THREE)
You all know the deal on this one by now!
DO YOU LIKE IT?
This song had already become a bit of a fave live, and the recording sounded great so we decided to hold it till the end of the album and finish on a real high. This was another track that came together so easily, so quickly, that we were in a bit of shock when we came up with it. One of the band's true anthems for sure. At the end, we sampled Thelonious Monk talking about wanting to be cremated when he died so his friends could smoke him. No shit..
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