Solid Gold Hell and Back

Rip It Up, Issue 204, 1 August 1994, Page 16

Solid Gold Hell and Back

Swingin’ Hot Murder is the name of Solid Gold Hell’s debut album, and swingin’ it is indeed. Featuring large slabs of beautifully controlled but terrible guitar noise, dying trumpets and kazoos, growling vocals, and a strong emphasis on rhythm, this is a dirty one for sure.

Engineered by guitarist Matthew Heine and bass player Colleen Brennan and produced by the band and Nick Roughan it’s a professionally home-made affair. Some of the tracks were done at the Lab in Auckland and the others were done at the old Kiwi bacon factory (a suitably festuring environment, smelling of a thousand pigs deaths) on a portable studio with Nick Roughan. Soild Gold Hell was spurned from the remnants of Auckland’s band of 89 S.P.U.D., the band who took the florid Auckland music scene and gave it a good blow . . . umm . . . somewhere, and whose only goal musically was to play the Westward Ho, which they never achieved.

When I arrive at Flying Nun the band are in a meeting, and Glen and Kelly’s smiling baby girl is gurgling happily on the floor amongst them. I pass the time by staring outside at the decay of the demolition site below.

For people that make the kind of music they do, with its swinging sickly rhythms and not a nicety in sight, bassist Colleen and singer Glen are pleasant folks indeed. During the interview Kelly delivers Glen a sticky bun, so it’s all very cosy actually. Glen tells me they are a very “family orientated” band then laughs crazily and takes a deep drag on his cigarette. Glen is responsible for the lyrical content, with help sometimes from Matthew. Hearing and reading Glen’s lyrics is like plunging a spade into earth, which is clean on the outside, but dug into and turned over is crawling with worms and is hot and smelly, exposing the dirtier and darker side of things. His lyrics, he says, are real but “I don’t write them in the ‘real’ sort of way that Don McGlashan does. They might be lyrics about some loser, but I write them in a way in which the loser might be me,” he laughs. “But they are real (pauses) . . . but some of them are total shit,” he chuckles. Why are you so attracted to the darker side of things, as opposed to writing about nice smells or something. Is it real for you or is it just something nasty you made up?

Photo: Kelly Osmand

“It’s in my soul,” answers Glen with a smile (of sorts). Collectively all the members of Solid Gold Hell have an impressive pedigree. Matthew was the guitarist in S.P.U.D. as before mentioned as was singer, songwriter and hornblower Glen who was also briefly the singer in King Loser. Matthew also had a stint in J.P.S.E. as guitarist for their European tour. Drummer Gary was (is?) the drummer for J.P.S.E. and bassist Colleen was in Frisbee supergroup Squaw, among other things. Glen tells me they all met at “Camp Self Esteem” and also at “The Police Academy”. They’ve done some impressive supports in their time as well. Babes In Toyland, where they were sickly explosive, Shellac and lately the Rollins Band, which they didn’t enjoy. “It wasn’t our sort of thing,” explains Glen, “and the night ended up with Colleen’s bass being stolen, so it wasn’t worth it." “Everyone was shouting for Rollins while we were playing our set,” says Colleen. Obviously people are going to say that Solid Gold Hell sound like S.P.U.D, because that is the easy thing for them to do, they don’t have to think, or actually listen and come to their own conclusions.

“Yeah, well they’ll go ‘there’s the singer from S.P.U.D., and there’s the guitarist from S.P.U.D. But with S.P.U.D. it was harder and less rhythmic, with us it’s definitely more swinging and smoother than S.P.U.D. ever was.”

I tell them that I prefer the Soild Gold Hell experience live, so various members of the band suggest that I might get a picture of them and jump up and down whilst listening to the record at a loud volume to try to recapture the situation. But they understand. Who do you think will affiliate themselves with your music? "Mutants” laughs Glen.

Matthew comes in at the end of the interview and Glen asks Mathew how they would describe their music, because Glen and Colleen couldn’t think of anything that they could happily settle on except “SWINGIN’”. “I dunno,” snorts Matthew, “Tell them to listen to it, tell them to buy the record, which the emphasis on the BUY bit.” Well if that isn’t descriptive enough . . . SHIRLEY-ANNE CHARLES