The Spirit Of Jazz, Guitar Graveyards & Being 'Allergic To Milk'

More than one venue in Melbourne has had splinters of guitar driven irretrievably into its stages by Poison Fish. Their live show has become famous among Melbourne gig-goers who like their musos rough and their music volatile. Now the band have taken that instrument-obliterating energy and scratched it onto their first LP, Allergic To Milk (disclaimer: no one in Poison Fish is actually lactose intolerant).

"It took us, what, 18 months?" asks Nick Angeli. "Something like that," agrees Josh Gagliardi. "We kept running out of money. And people want money for stuff that they do for a living."

"I think it's really captured us quite well, the album," continues Angeli. "It's pretty raw. Tom Maginn who mixed it's done a fantastic job. Put in a lot of hours, we were pestering him a lot." Pestering and not paying? "We're good for it, we're good for it," assures the bass slinger. "We paid him. Nowhere near enough, but we paid him," laughs Gagliardi.

"Josh writes paragraphs for song titles. There's more words in the song titles than the songs."

On Allergic To Milk, the guys took their grungy, post-punk sound and "rip your skin open" lyrics and added what Angeli calls the "The Spirit Of Jazz" [to which Gagliardi grunts noncommittally], on one song more than others.

"We did about, I don't know, eight takes and then just took one of them," says Gagliardi. Explains Angeli, "We didn't have any ideas for that one, which was fun. We kinda just got to wing it; you know, we got to jam for like a minute-and-a-half and just see what happened — whether it was a piece of garbage or gold."

"And you can only hear that on the album," says Gagliardi, "'cause we're never playing that one live."

So which song is the eight-take wonder? "This'll be good," says Angeli, leaning back and crossing his arms. "I want to hear this." Gagliardi asks: "How much time do you have?" "Josh writes paragraphs for song titles," explains Angeli. "There's more words in the song titles than the songs."

"It's something to the effect of 'In The Foetal', aaah, 'On The Concrete In The Foetal', ah, I don't know. It is like a paragraph."

"And there's no words in the song," grins Angeli. "That's why there's so many in the title; to compensate for the lack of vocals and poetry.

"'Passed Out On The Concrete In The Foetal Position Moments Before Common Sense Kicks In' — something like that," concedes Gagliardi. "That one was after a night at The Brunny, where I nearly passed out on the concrete."

It's fitting that The Brunswick Hotel was the inspiration. If you head to the venue you'll find a guitar massacre, smashed instruments suspended over the bar out back like grisly trophies. They all belonged to Gagliardi ("All but one, I think"). It's also where they are launching their album, with "14 bands, two stages, all day", says Angeli. The bassist also implies he's not above showing a little skin, just to sweeten the pot. "We got to draw a crowd somehow," he nods sagely. "And I'm willing. Depends how warm it is, depends how many beers I've had..."