For the uninitiated, 1997 was a big year for alternative rock-band, Regurgitator. Their second album, Unit, won Album of the Year at the ARIA Music Awards and the accompanying tour included a Hangover-esque night-out that left their drummer comatose for a week with no-one able to recall why. At the peak of their commercial and critical popularity, the Brisbane-based outfit seemed primed to release a third album.
2024 marks twenty-five years since …art dropped. Released after a yearlong hiatus, the initial reception was lacklustre; though it debuted at second-place on the Australian charts upon release in 1999 (sandwiched between Come on Over and the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack), it exited the top-50 in a little over two-months.
The critical reception was also mixed. In a chatroom interview hosted by Rolling Stone, lead vocalist Quan Yeomans noted that he “wanted to retire after” the reception received by …art. Yet, he reiterated his confidence in Regurgitator’s idiosyncratic style, “I should stop apologising for this bands [sic] misdemeanours at some point and grin and bear it.”
The inscription on the album’s cover, “actual product may not reach expectations”, was fitting. Unit’s opening track seemed prophetic in the wake of …art: ‘I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff’.
But, this tongue-in-cheek self-awareness is key to what differentiated Regurgitator from more mainstream bands in the 90s—and it’s perceptible across the duration of …art.
From the onset, songwriters Yeomans and Ben Ely jab at the music industry and fame more broadly. ‘Happiness’ and ‘Freshmint!’ ironise the band’s drug-fuelled vocation; despite the catchy, pop-rock sound of the former, Yeomans apostrophises, “drug me, fuck me, dull the pain… I’ve got a speck of truth caught in my eye, / Stings like hell and it’s making me cry”.
‘Freshmint!’, perhaps the album’s most enduring song, echoes early-80s synth-pop with backup vocals reminiscent of ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’: “keep my skin soft and shining from afar / For my high speed death in the back of a car / … we could boot champagne and snort caviar.”
These two Yeomans-written songs (tracks 1 and 3) bookend a return to the band’s grunge roots: Ely’s ‘Ghost’, where the spectral reverb of the guitar riff creates a suitably haunting atmosphere. Similarly, ‘Strange Human Being’ (Yeomans) has a grunge sound, though it’s punctuated with elements of hip-hop and surf-rock harmonising.
‘I Wanna Be a Nudist’ (Ely) and ‘I Like Repetitive Music’ demonstrate Regurgitator’s characteristic playfulness; Ely’s frenetic, alt-rock tone is at odds with the song’s subject matter, while Yeomans’s rap pokes fun at boring songs “to which brains get tenderised / Lightly battered and deep fried on high”.
Tracks 6 and 7 haven’t aged well, to my ear. ‘Art’ (Ely), is a strange, one-minute experience and the heavily-filtered vocals of ‘Feels Alright’ (Ely) are a bit too nineties for my taste.
‘I Love Tommy Mottola’ (Yeomans) is a return to form. Yeomans’s lyrics in this upbeat, alt-rock tune lampoon the then-Sony Music CEO: “I’ll be your soft young body… / Won’t you shape me, scrape me into a dream?” And, though it’s not often that you see a house song in the middle of an alt-rock album, ‘Are U Being Served’ (Yeomans) fits seamlessly.
‘Obtusian’ (Yeomans) is a fun, alt-rock song and ‘The Lonely Guy’ (Ely) reintroduces the synthesisers before ‘Virtual Life’ (Ely) rounds out the album. The final track, one of the high points, slows the pace of …art down. On the precipice of the new millennium, Ely’s grunge anthem decries the burgeoning alienation of an increasingly digital world: “I am living a virtual life / We got everything here inside, come on.”
…art has not had the staying power of its predecessor. While the band embarked on a twenty-five year anniversary tour for Unit in 2023, their third album has received comparatively little fanfare. For such a terrific record, this is a shame.
When asked what it meant to him to see unconventional Australian bands emerging in Regurgitator’s wake, Yeomans said that it provided him “with hope in… a sea of conservatism.”
A quarter century on, …art remains a testament to both the porous boundaries between genres and Regurgitator’s willingness to perforate them further. It is well-deserving of a listen, now and for the next twenty-five years.