BIGGER THAN GORE

Rip It Up, Issue 168, 1 July 1991, Page 14

BIGGER THAN GORE

The Renderers, Flying Nun's first "country" band, four cow punks from Christchurch, singing about the bottle, the devil and rock'n'roll. Somehow, it's appropriate that they come from that forgotten town, away from the shiny dance/funk/metal beast that stalks Auckland.

It wasn't that they particularly

wanted to form a country band but Brian Crook (ex-Scorched Earth Policy) had always found it easy to write that sort of stuff and Maryrose, newly married (to Brian) and

anointed by the spirit of Loretta Lynn (whom she discovered via Cissy Spacek in the movie Coal Miner's Daughter} had some cathartic

singing to do. Her songs, like 'I Hear The Devil'or'More Dead Than

Alive', are hymns to lonesomeness and regret, sung from the wrong

side of the tracks.

Other song titles on the Renderers' debut LP Trail of Tears, are equally evocative: 'Bigger Than Texas', 'Holiday in Dakota', 'Lone Star Burning'. With an unobtrusive rhythm section comprising Haydn Jones on drums and John Billows on bass, the Renderers play their own personal version of country and

western — dreamy, downbeat and tinged with psychedelia, most effectively in their single, 'Bigger

Than Texas'. Maryrose's voice isn't always note perfect, but the occasional breaks in her delivery

serve to sharpen the edges of the sorrowful tales she tells in her songs.

In common with other members of the close knit Christchurch musical clique of which they are a part, the Renderers have a way with an Americanism. From the

aforementioned song titles to Maryrose's singing accent, it's as if they adopt a state of mind when they play which manages to sound completely natural five thousand miles from its source of origin. Perhaps the dust-bowl atmosphere of their music stems from the city in which they live. Everyone says Christchurch looks like a little England, but it reminds me more of a cross between Paris and Texas — a combination of old world charm (stone buildings, duck ponds, balustraded river) and the quaint flavour of a small American town — clapboard fences and flat sidewalks, autumn leaves and inner city boarding houses, even the flat expanse of freeway cqming in from the airport, where the timber log sign, "Welcome to Christchurch, Garden City", brings to mind Twin

Peaks. The Renderers are part of a musical underground that has existed in Christchurch for years. The Garden City is home for such bands as the Terminals, the Axel Grinders, the Quakers, Into the Void, Stepford Five and Cease To Exist (if they

haven't already ceased to exist) Fact is, most of the Christchurch

"underground" don't get the chance to be anything but. For too long

there's been nowhere to play save in somebody's front room and no way to record 'cept with home cassette equipment in somebody's rehearsal space. Unlike Dunedin, Christchurch has no illustrious alternative music

heritage to live up to, nor does it

offer Auckland's glittering career opportunites (more than one venue, independent record labels, media galore). Which means people are at liberty to develop their ideas in a fashion-free environment, disappearing up obscure musical cul-de-sacs and down blind alleys of the soul to create something idiosyncratic and hard to classify. The Renderers stand a little apart again, although they share the uncanny Christchurch predilection for writing songs about madness, badness and sadness. Sympathy for the devil inside, yet as Maryrose says, she's a perfectly happy individual. It's just that themes of

decaying moral fibre lend themselves to juicy lyrics. Brian and Maryrose started out writing songs to amuse themselves ("for the sheer enjoyment of writing a song called 'Highway To Hell"'). Any explanation of their aesthetic was unnecessary

until they got signed to Flying Nun and confused the purists with their "country" billing. Inevitably, Maryrose is the visual focus of the band, which has its downside. As when they played to a stonily unimpressed audience in a West Coast pub to repeated jeers of "wanker" directed —■ so Maryrose believed — at herself. Presumably, they felt threatened by her blonde hair and less-than-dowdy clothes. As soon as they got off stage a young man came up to her and said, "Look at you, what a waste of a life." What insight. At another west coast venue the manager accused them of emptying the pub and advised them to stop playing. Mind you, even

Townes Van Zandt failed to impress the regulars at the Barrytown Gun Club where the specially imported American country'n'western star found himself playing to a row of backs at the bar.

Meanwhile, holed up in their cottage on the edge of Christchurch, Maryrose and Brian have already written enough new songs for another album.

Trail of Tears has some bumpy production moments and there's a lot the band would like to change but it was recorded when they were still finding their feet as a group. Haydn Jones, for example, found himself seated behind a drumkit in the studio the same day he joined.

Brian: "I think the more self-conscious elements in the music have disappeared and we're much more of a band than we were when we recorded the album. There was a really nice strong personal point of view that maybe isn't there on the new songs." But the liquor soaked imagery is. Mary-Rose's latest song is called 'Dregs' and the first line goes: "I poured a drink". Seems where the Renderers are concerned the song remains the same but their fans ain't complainin'.

DONNA YUZWALK