Birdman look fine in fresh plumage

Birdman look fine in fresh plumage

Rob Younger is a grump. But at least the frontman and founder of Aussie punk icons Radio Birdman is happy enough to explain why.

You ask him how things are and he replies: "Pretty good I suppose. What do you mean? With the band or life in general?"

Oh, life in general.

"Yeah, yeah, it's okay. If you can widely ignore what's going on in the world, everything's great."

The band's new album, Zeno Beach, their first in 25 years, is out and they play the Kings Arms in Auckland on Monday night.

When I tell Younger he's playing at a dirty rock'n'roll pub he's happy.

"Yep, good. Hopefully we get slung out."

Getting booted out of the Kings Arms would make it just like the old days, when the band started out in the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst in the mid 70s.

In those days Radio Birdman divided people and that confrontational aspect is something Younger misses. "We'd get kicked out of these joints for either our appearance or just because of how we sounded.

"That sort of polarisation was thrilling in a way because you don't really get that in this day and age."

With bands like the Saints, Radio Birdman - with their Stooges meets hard and heavy rock sound - were among the first to bring punk to the land Downunder.

But Birdman were never strictly punk.

"Our stuff has always been diverse," Younger says.

"People don't tend to mention the diversity, they just think of the relentless hard rock or punk. That's fine, but in actuality it's not true because our last album [1981's Living Eyes] was quite varied in many ways." The band released only two albums, Living Eyes and their 1978 debut Radios Appear, before splitting up.

They reformed for the 1996 Big Day Out in Australia, started writing songs, "and finally, after an inordinate amount of time, we actually got it together to go into the studio.

"It dawned on us that playing the old songs was an exercise in nostalgia and it wasn't feeling that fresh anymore."

Zeno Beach reveals Radio Birdman's diversity.

There's the psychedelic and dirge-like Hungry Cannibals and the punk Connected. Then there's the trippy The Brotherhood of Al Wazah - "that's been described as our Doorsy one".

Younger loves performing live so he's not going to let a node on his vocal chords stop him from doing a mini world tour.

"I put more into my own gig than I ever did before. Although that's been to the detriment of my voice now because my voice is shot. It's crap.

"I've been advised not to do any of this but I like playing.

"Plus I could never save up to travel all over the world and see all these places, so I have to be in a band to do it."

Who: Radio Birdman
Where & when: Kings Arms, today
New album: Zeno Beach, out now