Mental As Anything - Cats and Dogs
#438
September 1981
Mental As Anything
Cats & Dogs
Genre: Australian Jamboree
3.25 out of 5
Highlights:
Too Many Times
Chemical Travel
I wonder if it’s just how my brain works that I immediately think of Southern Culture on the Skids when I listen to this record. I’m not that well versed in the latter but for some reason I am associating the two.
By now you know that the Listening Project staff has a thing for Australian music and investigating everything that could have escaped those shores and show up at Bleecker Bob’s. This is another one of those.
They aren’t “Mental” in a punk rock way. More in a goofball, this is our weekend project away from our desk jobs way.
Sometimes they remind me of The Four Postmen as well. Like on the sublime and gently hilarious “If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?”.
It’s not that great. Sure, it’s fine. And listenable but it’s a trifle. A ditty like “Let’s Cook” comes across as trying too hard to be Nick Lowe and the rest of the tracks are all polished and well crafted but ultimately amount to little. When they actually do cook with some rock and roll gas, as on “Looking for Bird”, I think they could have toured with that Rockabilly and put on a fine show that would move a lot of cans of Fosters. And biting on Adam Ant as hard as they do on “Psychedelic Peace Lamp” has me reaching for any Adam record instead of this.
