We Asked The Hard-Ons To Rate Scary Good

The word ‘critic’ strikes fear in the heart of any creative person. It doesn’t matter if we’re referring to surfing, art, music, origami or how to skoll beers like a mad-dog lunatic – hanging your hopes on someone else’s opinion will always reek of cheap red wine and gentle sobbing. Which is how we pictured the conversation unfolding when we asked Ray Ahn from the Hard-Ons to review our pride and joy, our little precious, our big baby Jesus: The Scary Good Album. Not all of it, just one track titled “VB” featuring Ruby Fields, Hockey Dad’s Billy Fleming & Brock Fitzgerald. It was a dicey affair, holding court with a gut-punching maniac like Ray, but if anyone was gonna tell us if “VB” was absolute horse shit or not, it was him. If you don’t know, Ray and his band The Hard-Ons are one of Australia’s seminal pub punk acts, and for not knowing that, you should take a square palm to the face while we fill your brain with thought bubbles like a ten dollar jug. The Hard-Ons formed in 1981, in Sydney’s Punchbowl (yes, the same suburb as Trent) and have been at the core of Sydney’s blistering live music scene ever since (and ever after). Suffice to say, the band have played every marquee music event this sun-cooked country has to offer over the course of their 36 year career, lashing out some of the sickest punk anthems we have. They even did a song called “Surfin’ On My Face” which strikes a chord with any salt blooded gumby living between Bondi and Byron. It’s the sort of silver tongued commentary we’ve come to expect of Mr. Ray Ahn, he’s honest, hilarious and wildly opinionated. What more do you need from a rock critic? Here’s what he reckons about “VB” on the Scary Good album…

“VB” by Ruby Fields is a rollicking rock n roll number that nods somewhat in the direction of 90’s grunge, with the grafting of a killer melody onto a muscular riff.

The musicianship and the recording sounds relaxed and loose to me. I think this works well for the result, anything too jarringly tight would have interfered with Ruby Fields’ immaculate vocal ability.

Somehow it all sounds magically Australian, magically free-spirited.

– Ray Ahn, The Hard-Ons

SCARY GOOD the album, out now on Spotify & iTunes.