Aussie band have luck of the Irish

The Go Set are ready and willing for two Auckland gigs tomorrow.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that singing about convicts, the Eureka Stockade and the Lucky Country in a twang that makes the word "fires" sound like "foires", would make you easy to distinguish as an Aussie.

Nope. Melbourne Celtic-punk band the Go Set are constantly being mistaken for Irish. But the band's frontman Justin Keenan doesn't mind the confusion.

"We've been labelled a lot of things," he says, on holiday in Whangarei a few days before the band's Auckland gigs. "We get labelled colonial punk-rock - I don't know what any of that means really. But when it comes to New Zealand, a lot of what we say about Australia, you could literally change the place names. Indigenous issues to youth unemployment - the countries are really similar."

That could explain why the band are back again after less than six months. Last time it was to promote their debut album, Sing a Song of Revolution; this time it's for the follow-up, The Hungry Mile. The Auckland gigs tomorrow will open with Johnny Rotten McHaggis on Scottish small pipes before the rest of the band join in, backed by Irish dancers. In other words, it will be a theatrical affair, although Keenan would like to think you'll learn something more useful than how to do a jig.

"The aim is that people leave our gigs having felt an emotion and having their brains stimulated," he says. "So people who want to get drunk and listen to Top 40 are really the complete opposite people that we're trying to attract."

All this from a guy who writes songs about his forebears' working-class roots yet hadn't the slightest interest in history at school.

Now 31, Keenan, who is "three parts Irish, one part Scottish and quite Aussie" is an avid reader. Growing up in rural Victoria listening to his family's stories inspired him to hit the books and start writing about it.

His songs are vignettes passed down in true folk music tradition, and tinged with a leftie sentiment. That, he says, is what sets them apart from bands they admire, such as the Pogues, the Dropkick Murphys and Wedding Parties Anything.

Keenan, McHaggis and bandmates Mark Moran (bass), Ben Cuthbert (drums) and Andrew Baxter (guitar/mandolin) spent years in other bands before forming the Go Set in 2002.

"Before that we were trying to write music we thought people wanted to hear," says Keenan. "We all got fed up."

One night in the pub, Moran asked Keenan why they didn't just play what came naturally. An excited discussion followed about the music they both grew up on: the Clash, the Dubliners, the Buzzcocks, Gang of Four.

"When we formed the Go Set we thought no one in their right mind would possibly like us," says Keenan. "We literally thought we would sell 10 records. The irony of that is we had this unique sound and perspective that has meant the Go Set have been 10 times more successful than other bands any of us have ever been in.

"We set out to do something completely ourselves with no objective of writing songs to get us radio play. And it's worked the completely opposite way."

Though not exactly a household name, the Go Set regularly tour Australia and Keenan says they sell a lot of records over the internet, often to buyers who think they're Irish.

Lyrically though, you couldn't get much more Ocker.

They named their album The Hungry Mile after a 1930s poem by Ernest Anthony about the plight of the Sydney wharfies whose cheap migrant labour helped to lead to the union movement. Another new song, Scarlet Snow, tells of soldiers setting off for World War I.

Not all the songs are so earnest. Keenan wrote The Hardness of Hand about domestic violence and Learning Slowly about becoming a dad four years ago: "I drink too much at times, I have been known to fight and I always lose on sure things".

"I just used to be a dickhead," he explains.

"Having a child was an amazing point in my life where I thought 'Shit, I'm an adult now, there's no hiding it.'

"I think having an element of vulnerability on a punk record is a good thing, rather than everything being 'blah blah blah, raise your fist in the air' and all these sort of chants. It makes it more accessible."


Performance

* Who: The Go Set
* Where and when: tonight at Ward Lane, Hamilton; 4pm tomorrow at Grey Lynn Library Hall (all ages) with the Rabble and guests; tomorrow night at Kings Arms with Cobra Khan and Suicide Dogs