Distort X KX Aminal

In the early days of 2023, Mitch Tolman (Low Life) contacted me to ask if I wanted to play a solo show with Iceage and Low Life at the Sydney Opera House. I had no songs and no idea what I wanted to do but I’d written some songs during lockdown with Greta Now and thought a collaboration with her would be relatively easy to turn around. I confirmed the show under the name DX and picked up a guitar.

I was intending to write something like Turquoise Days or whatever, some simple minimal wave stuff, but the song I wrote came out sounding like The Mob and I came up with a vocal line that in my mind sounded like a crooner peace punk delivery and I imagined Jacques Brel singing with Crisis and that was what I wanted to hear. I’d missed singing with Total Control and being in a band that played live. Our last show with TC had been right after our Japan tour at the birth of the pandemic, three years before, and while I’d done a few shows with SJN since it was that TC style of singing I missed w…