Sixfthick: Lap Dancers.

Sixfthick play the Arena on Friday and the Troccadero, Surfers Paradise on Saturday. The Lap Of Luxury is in stores now.

Sixfthick have emerged over the years as one of Brisbane’s finest live bands, a frenzied mix of farm-fried punkabilly, cheatin’ heart country and fevered rock ‘n’ roll. In the double frontman act of Ben and Geoff Corbett, we have the closest realisation of Stooges-era Iggy Pop splitting in two and relocating to Gympie. But describing them is difficult. You just have to see them for yourself. Not to mention hear them. Because their excellent second album The Lap Of Luxury is a fully-charged, raw, passionate and frequently hilarious example of what they do best: which is rock, shimmy, croon and shout.

“We did it all ourselves,” explains Ben Corbett. “Fred (drummer) engineered everything. He did a small course in engineering and we invested some band money in a portable studio, which Fred taught himself how to use and he also recorded some Fred Band stuff, a Gentle Ben demo and some Gazoonga Attack stuff as well.”

He did a very professional job on The Lap Of Luxury, I must say.

“Yeah, but you can also tell the drummer mixed it! The whole album has a fucked up sex and crime feel, I suppose, which Dan (bassist) also tried to get across in the artwork. He did all the art and photos for the record, so it was really a DIY effort for us!”

“We had some time limitations, because we had to get the record ready before we went to Japan. We all worked extra hours and pulled it all together without too much stress. We went to Japan for about three weeks and came back at the end of July.”

How was that?

“It was awesome. The rock ’n roll venues there are run so well and we were also treated really well. We’d already toured with the Zoobombs in Australia and we got (previous album) Chicken released on a label in Japan called Massive. We played with Zoobombs in Japan as well and we were playing to their crowd, which is a very young, college kind of bunch, I guess you could say. It went really well, because us and the Zoobombs play with a similar level of energy, only they’re more positive and we’re a bunch of cunts! Geoff and I would jump into the crowd and they didn’t really know how to take that, they’d be scattering to the other side of the room, or hiding behind their hands giggling. A few shows just went out of control, where people really came out of their shell. It was a great experience.”

“We also managed to get quite a few days off, so we saw Tokyo and Osaka, as well as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, which was pretty incredible. It was the first time Fred had ever been overseas, so it was pretty special for him, I think.”

Meanwhile, back home, the band is getting ready to tour the country, including this week’s performance at the Arena with TISM.

“It’s going to be very cool, we’re really looking forward to getting out and playing,” says Ben. “We’re pushing I Was Just Cleaning It And It Went Off for radio, because they love songs about guns and masturbation, don’t they?”

So the track could be interpreted as a double entendre song, then?

“Yes, very much so,” says Ben, then exclaiming in mock horror, “What, double entendres in Sixfthick?? If anything, it’s a single entendre song!”

From ….And It Went Off’s tale of shotgun/ejaculation woe (‘I don’t see any need to involve the cops’) to the tragic love song Last Lullaby, The Lap Of Luxury showcases the Corbett brothers’ ability to adopt dark, funny narratives into their lyrics.

“Yeah, we’re not averse to narrative,” says Ben. “It can help to get a point across, even if that point is not seemingly the main focus of the lyrics. It can be a more artful way of expressing your worldview, I suppose. Geoff and I put a fair bit of effort into lyrics. That’s why I think it’s really good we’ve got a lyric sheet with this album. For years, we’ve had people saying to us ‘I can’t understand a fuckin’ word you’re saying, but I really like the title’!”

Sixfthick are also uncannily able to musically evoke their own titles: I Got The Swamp, for instance, sounds down ‘n dirty and oddly… swamp-like.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much deliberate. That’s the joy of working with such talented musicians. I can write the lyric I wanna write and they can capture the feeling of the lyric through music,” says Ben, before adding with tongue-in-cheek, “And in turn, I can interpret it all on stage with liturgical dance.”

So everybody wins.

“Yes everybody wins,” laughs Ben. “Except maybe the audience.”