Sexy Bistro

There ain't no party like a Lords Of Wong party. The Wongs have been meeting people's lowered expectations for a few years now, and their ramshackle sleaze and shimmy has been perfectly captured on their newest release, Club Bistro. The five-piece relocated to the unlikely surrounds of Maleny, and among the partying managed to come away with a record.

“I wouldn't call it a nightmare, more a series of small mishaps pasted together,” bassist Gerald Wong states wryly. “There were difficulties along the way and it took a few days to get into the groove of things. Donnie [Miller] did well with the recording; he was tearing his hair out, but we are used to tearing our hair out over Jimmy [vocals]. Still, Donnie's still speaking to us, so it can't have been that bad.”

A blistering listen, Club Bistro captures the visceral nature of the band, but a few eyebrows are likely to be raised over the sprawling title track.

“We normally have one change in a track, pace or tempo, but there are none there,” Michael Wong (guitar) states. “We had intentions of getting a couple of jam songs out when we were up in Maleny. We also really wanted someone on the album who could sing, and Sabrina [Lawrie] really fills that void for us. There was a lot of banter about Club Bistro, and the whole album kind of built around that title and song. It came out really well actually, even though it just plays over and over; there were a lot of drugs involved to be honest, as you can probably tell from the lyrics.”

The album has been created to succinctly sum up the Lords Of Wong live experience, complete with banter and talking between tracks. “We wanted to have an album that you could play right through in one sitting, as if it was one track,” Gerald explains. “We didn't want it to sound like a whole lot of different stuff put together. We went up there with a bunch of songs we thought we could record, then wrote some songs while we were there, then pieced everything together so that it sounds something like a set. We wanted something intimate, as if you were there with us – a little image of ourselves. We can bring you down to our level.”

Another interesting factor about the album is its consistency, especially considering that three consecutive tracks have the same playing time (3.01).

“There is nothing planned, yet the weird thing is that on the first record, we had about six songs that came in at 4.01,” Michael admits. “But we figured 4.01 was far too long for an average song so we settled on 3.18. If you play at 120 beats a minute, verse and chorus, you will land on 3.18, and that is close to the average single length of three-and-a-half minutes. Really, we are shaving 12 seconds of filler off to give everyone what they clearly want – enough time to get a quick beer and sit down ready for the next song.”

Club Bistro is the perfect document of Lords Of Wong that you can get outside of the live arena, but it's on stage that the band truly shines. “I don't want to give too much away, but it's going to be very sexy, in a Wong way,” Gerald asserts. “We will be creating a beautifully colourful cocktail for the evening, which I believe will be called a Bistro Bliss, and we want to encourage people to dress sexy. There may be a key bowl too. Leave your inhibitions – we are classy like that.”

Lords Of Wong will be playing the following shows:

Friday 16 November - The Bettle Bar, Brisbane QLD