Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Spy V Spy, Checked Label Services 2021.
Now here’s a blast from the past. It’s been 28 years since Spy V Spy has released any music and those of us that loved them in their glory days, back in the mid 1980s and early 1990s, had long ago given up the dream of them reforming.
But they are back with us and quite frankly their particular brand of socially aware rock is needed now more than ever.
The Spies started out as the voice of Sydney’s homeless back in the early ‘80s and their songs spoke for the disenfranchised and downtrodden.
The issues that sparked their anger and engendered their music all those years ago: racism, inequality, drug addiction, corruption… are just as prevalent today as they were back when they formed.
In fact, many would argue that things are no better, possible even worse.
Right from their first release in 1981, Do What You Say, they hooked me in.
They were a ska band back then but the longer they played the Sydney pub circuit the harder edged their music became, especially after they signed to the Oils Powderworks label.
The Spies first album is one of my most loved possessions, Harry’s Reasons failed to chart and sales in general were poor but the songs and the issues that they were writing about were close to my heart.
Songs like Injustice about the plight of our First Nations people or Give Us Something concerning media responsibility and the title track Harry’s Reasons (Harry was slang for heroin) about the curse of addiction and our responses to it were important social statements.
The band’s real success occurred when they changed labels to WEA and released A.O. Mod.TV.Vers. in 1986 which was an acronym for adults only modified television version.
Those of us old enough to remember this will have often seen it along the bottom of our TV screens whenever the censor deemed our morals might be compromised by the material being transmitted.
Once again, the songs were about contemporary issues, inner city urban redevelopment (Don’t Tear It Down); Sallie-Anne (a murdered whistleblower); and Credit Card about consumerism and our burgeoning debt.
The Spies next two albums, Xenophobia (racial issues 1988, our bicentennial celebration of dispossession) and Trash The Planet (1989) followed the same formula and their reputation and following spread internationally.
Apparently they had a huge following in Brazil.
And then in the early ‘90s it all seemed to come to an end but this single, Overland, marks their return and a new album, New Reasons, is set for release in September.
