arc07: "THIS IS BRISBANE HISTORY" - A Kitchen's Floor Retrospective (Mess+Noise, 2015)
+++Brisbane's Kitchen's Floor discography review and interview circa 2015
I was stoked to see that Kitchen’s Floor are releasing their first LP since this interview/feature was published in 2015 (pre-orders are available now for a Nov 25 release date); it seemed like good timing to throw this up for context. Thanks to Matt for permission to dive back seven years, and re: the last line of the feature, the new LP ‘None of That’ has yet another age-titled track as suggested. Prescient! Quick intro to this one due to finding as good an intro as I could have written in another file, not sure where it was published—possibly a dead blog?
Intro: The 2009 Kitchen’s Floor CD ‘Loneliness is a Dirty Mattress’ is the first thing I ever bought from Repressed Records; the band have been important to me ever since. That album changed my entire preferred musical aesthetic and gave me a lot of bad company. It's a great record in a very 'those who know will know' kinda way. Case in point: I once borrowed my dad’s ute to move house and accidentally left the CD in the glove box. I didn’t see it for a year or so, assuming that it was lost between houses. When I next borrowed his ute, I found the case but not the disc. I asked him if he knew what happened to it and he replied, only half joking: “You wanted that load of shit? It’s gone. I listened to the first song, ejected it and threw it out the fucken window. It’s crushed up on the side of the Hume Highway!” The first song goes for 48 seconds.
“This is Brisbane history/Creeping round the background” – ‘Sundowner,’ Battle of Brisbane, 2015
Kitchen’s Floor has been a constant of Brisbane’s underground since 2008. The mouth-piece of singer-songwriter Matt Kennedy, the band’s releases have documented seven years of a specific subset of the city through the nation’s bleakest looking glass. In 2009’s Loneliness is a Dirty Mattress and 2011’s Look Forward to Nothing, Kitchen’s Floor delivered a spectrum of negative thought with unashamed honesty, causing storied personal rifts and confused social interactions for the band’s immediate circle. But for those of us outside of it, these albums represented something darkly relatable: archives of dejection built from every warbled, half-shouted lyric.
On their third LP Battle of Brisbane, Kitchen’s Floor make it clear from the outset that this is part of an ongoing document of the band’s home city. “This is Brisbane history,” Kennedy shouts to begin the record, and the band responds with a newly realised vigour. Now, Kennedy’s guitar sounds more like it was pinched from a touring stadium act than picked off the council pick-up pile. Josh Watson’s bass is not just serviceable, but of scope and focus (especially on the reimagining of ‘Bitter Defeat’), and Robert Vagg’s drums come heavily through the mix. This new cacophony of sound evokes an overzealous terror at the edges, giving power to the ruminations of Kennedy’s vocals.
As the album’s title suggests, this third LP delivers a new message to what came before. It pushes outward at a city rather than mumbling underneath it. Even the record’s cover – featuring Kennedy, back to the camera in full military regalia, staring over the expanse of the city – claims the drawing of battle lines. If this is a record that spends its time in the trenches then, it’s clear the sentiment of each song hasn’t travelled far from the dishevelled bedroom that was the setting of records prior. In the LP’s defiant opener ‘Sundowner’, the mid-song calls to: “Defend the streets” fade to a desperate close. “When are they going to leave?” Kennedy eventually asks. “I hate everybody here.”
Brisbane (like most Australian cities) is experiencing a sharp increase in pace of an extended period of growth. This development is prevalent in Kennedy’s adopted home, the inner-west suburb of Paddington, which has evolved from the low-rent creative’s paradise of 2008 to a bustling area of young professionals. It’s no secret that this evolution has driven much of this record’s focus, with the high-rise at the centre of the album cover accompanied by the anonymous urban sprawl that leads to the record’s author. “I’ve been witnessing change around me but never taking part in it,” Kennedy tells me over a late-night phone call. “I’ve watched everything get renovated, the rent going up…I’ve had to be at the whim of town planners and watch the horrible people move in around me and just deal with it. So I burrowed in and haven’t left.” The burrow is the storied share-house known only as 116.
“I was happy (x 8) / Left me here (x 3)”– ‘Left,’ Loneliness is a Dirty Mattress (2009)
The bleakest Kitchen’s Floor recordings lay on their first record, Loneliness is a Dirty Mattress. Presented plainly in a black cover with type-written labelling, the songs boiled down complicated personal conflicts into cryptic sniping and shouted ramblings. In its insert, a black-and-white photograph of a broken down Queenslander is presented without comment. This building was Kennedy’s home for nine years, the share-house which itself had a title track on Kitchen’s Floor’s second record, Look Forward to Nothing (“The walls are rotting,” Kennedy sings). In this photo, the paint of a slapped-together fence peels back at the edges of its age-worn timber. It stands as one of the lasting images of a house that only this year was transformed into a medical centre, with Kennedy living alone in a new granny flat fashioned beneath it. “I think the landlord was embarrassed of having the only un-renovated house in the suburb,” he says dryly. “It has a white picket fence now.”
The most recent visual document of 116 was the film clip for the version of ‘Bitter Defeat’ that featured on a self-titled 7” in 2013: Kitchen’s Floor’s final release on Negative Guest List, the cult Brisbane label run by Brendon Annesley. This version of ‘Bitter Defeat’ featured the tinny acoustic that Kennedy made a hallmark of his earlier recordings, and, undercut by the mournful organ of Cured Pink’s Andrew McLellan, was a surprising downer for a band that tended to simmer more often than stifle. On Battle of Brisbane, Kennedy gives ‘Bitter Defeat’ the treatment his landlord gave to 116. The re-recorded version does away with McLellan’s organ, doubles the tempo and makes an overdriven and overzealous bassline its centre-point. Taking the previously hallowed track to a near frenzy, the new lick of paint extends its scope, but is unable to hide the emptying sentiment of the original: “The window is open to a nothing day,” Kennedy moans.
There’s a notable shift in the language of Battle of Brisbane compared to the previous records. Only once on the entire album does anyone else appear (on ‘Aches’: “I have no idea what you’ve been through”). The rest of it settles on themes of self-loathing and a growing disgust for the city that houses him. “This place used to be good,” Kennedy spits on ‘Strength,’ and sums up all the sentiment of latter-day Kitchen’s Floor in the entirety of ‘Down’ –
Looking down at the fucking ground,
I’m sick of walking down this street.
I’ve nothing left to give,
But they won’t even think about me.
(Waking up your dead friends)
The wine has done its job,
Finally I won’t think about this.
“When I first moved [to Paddington] things were happening, I could put house shows on, but now I don’t have any of that,” Kennedy says. “I think because I’ve been isolated for so long I’ve gone a bit insane. I live alone and don’t have much in the way of friendships or relationships these days, so there’s nothing to write about in that way. So why not make this record about humanity in general, and write the most nihilistic, fucked-up rock album I could?”
If Battle of Brisbane is the fucked up rock album, then the track that opens its B-Side is its biggest moment. Featuring howling violins, Blank Realm’s Sarah Spencer on backing vocals, and an undeniable melody, ‘Doomed’ is the most conventional Kitchen’s Floor song ever recorded. It’s one that Kennedy says was his “attempt at writing a Gotye-like hit single so [he] wouldn’t be broke anymore”. He’s self-aware enough to note that this effort in itself was doomed, with the repeating mantra, “Everybody will leave you/Nothing to love,” hardly a chart-topping sentiment. It’s clear that on this record, Kennedy’s been unable (or unwilling) to shy away from his existential dread, maybe because the battle came to him without his asking for it. “If you stay somewhere for long enough, and you keep doing what feels natural, and you think that something good will come of it: that’s not the most satisfying way to go about life. The frustration and self-loathing comes into it and you get down about your choices of sticking around too long.”
“How did I let this happen to me?” – ‘Observer,’ Battle of Brisbane (2015)
Feeling disenfranchised by the gentrification of your city may not be a novel concept, but Kennedy has always had a uniquely honest take on how events like that translate to the personal. In some ways, Kitchen’s Floor has always been dedicated to expressing loneliness and its side-effects through a lens that was somewhere between the realist and the absurd. On Look Forward to Nothing, that was evoked on the album cover by the yellowed image of Kennedy sitting hungover and dejected in his nicotine-stained bedroom. On Battle of Brisbane, this arises in the fantastical war on a city that doesn’t even know the band exists. By remaining in Brisbane, even as it changes into something increasingly unsavoury, Kennedy has shown a strange loyalty to the city (“If I left it would feel like betrayal,” he says). It’s this kind of stubborn resilience in contributing to a town that breeds the bitterness; you’re rarely rewarded for personal perseverance.
“I wanted to get a point out there about that disconnect between ordinary life and feeling the usual angsty clichés about the world,” Kennedy explains. “Not having anyone to be close with here, or being able to have those close relationships that make life fun…I think it’s kind of a comment on all of those things, from my own point of view living alone in the most gentrified suburb in Brisbane, wondering how the fuck I’m going to keep paying my rent.”
A continuity to Kitchen’s Floor can be drawn across six years of recordings, “like a conspiracy,” Kennedy jokes. The more obscure threads aside, the connectivity is clearest on the closing track of each LP. Like a timestamp, each track declares Kennedy’s age at the time of writing each record. “I think it’s important to embrace your age,” he says. “I’m obsessed with how time progresses; I have been ever since I was a kid.” Each of these tracks demonstrates the evolution of Kitchen’s Floor, in a way, showing exactly what led to the waging of a silent war on Battle of Brisbane. Broken down by a failure to upkeep personal relationships on ‘Twenty-two’; pure stagnation on ‘Twenty-four’ (“This backyard is never going to change”); and rumination on ‘Twenty-eight’ (“Why have you hung around? / Haunting my thoughts”). On Kitchen's Floor as an ongoing document, Kennedy says only: “depending on how I'm going, the last song on the next album might be ‘Forty-two,’” Kennedy laughs. “If I live that long.”
+++other updates___
__ as mentioned in the last post, i’ve brought back the barely human zine & tape subscription service from last year, though it’s run via a kind of back channel - i.e. if you sign up as a paid subscriber to this substack, rather than being money for nothing (empty words), you will be posted a few zines and bootleg cassette tapes through the coming year. it’s $5 a month or $50 for an annual sub, and can be a combination of back catalogue (below) and new releases. it’s all a bit messy as a heads up, but i’d expect one package before christmas and three in 2023! to sign on, click below and i think follow whatever options end up with a dollar sign at the end (note that the newsletter will always be free to read either way) ——>
(please note: i can only do this in australia only because postage is crazy overseas, but email me if you want anything and we can find a way)
__if paid subscription is too arduous or nonsensical you can always email me direct at max@barelyhuman.info or order via the web store.
back cat options include (l-r):
++ THAT’S ENOUGH PUNKY; I LIKE FOLK ‘N’ COUNTRY (2021)
zine discussion of the ageing out punk’s adoption of country music lore via grand theft auto san andreas (2003) + other asides (w/ country and folk mixtape)
++ DAVID ALLAN COE (2021)
mini-zine discussing the authenticity problem of outlaw country via subversive and sometimes problematic country outsider DAC (w/ censored bootlegs of the underground records)
++ BANDS OF RON HOUSE (GREAT PLAINS, THOMAS JEFFERSON SLAVE APARTMENTS, EGO SUMMIT - 2021)
mini-zine discussing columbus, ohio, ron house, great plains obscurity and TJSA unlikely successes (w/ bootlegged mix tape)
++ CCCP FEDELI ALLA LINEA (2021)
mini-zine re: Italian USSR themed post-punk band CCCP with discussion of their vision, and re-naming to CSI (Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti) after the fall of the Berlin Wall (w/ bootlegged mix tape of live performance and singles)
++ NEGATIVLAND (2021)
mini-zine re: the great cease & desist dodgers Negativland, sued by U2 for naming an LP ‘U2,’ and later sued by SST for publishing an underwhelming royalty statement (w/ bootleg featuring the deleted ‘U2’ album, lectures on the issues and more)
++ T-SHIRT PUNK (WIPERS V DEAD MOON, 2022)
mini-zine on the great t-shirt punk hegemons of dead moon and wipers, and how they managed to remain two of the most unique and defiantly independent bands in punk-adjacent lore (w/ bootleg mixtapes of deep cuts, outtakes and hits from both)