Rob Hirst & Sean Sennett – Crashing The Same Car Twice

If you were to ask Sean Sennett (The Incredible Strand) on how he and Rob Hirst (Midnight Oil) got together to collaborate on their forthcoming debut album, Crashing The Same Car Twice, you are likely to be told about how they “…met 100 years ago on a mountain”. It’s a sentiment that substantiates the album distinctively with its ‘let’s move on, plug in and play’ perspective.

He’s telling us that it doesn’t matter. What does, is that when you give Crashing The Same Car Twice the once over and Hirst elects for an “Okay” instead of a count, we’re off into a two-noted, distorted, guitar riff bass drive on opener and lead single ‘When The Darkness Comes’ and immediately the tempo for the whole album is set.

This is an album that employs a lot of old school '60s styles that sparked the rise of garage rock and a helping of newer techniques that led to the genres revival in the late eighties, early nineties before The Strokes, The Hives & The White Stripes commercialised it for the more recent times.

Radio Birdman’s Deniz Tek joins the collaboration on second track ‘Call To Arms’. Hirst’s drum stomp sets an ardent pace and his patterns that follow from the stomp give rise to a well crafted track that gel dominant guitar melodies and vocal harmonies.

‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ seems to brood over a bitter relationship and the title line is vocally delivered in a Bowie-esque manner. It’s by no means a Bowie song though, as the verses are driven along by palm-muted guitars before breaking the restraint with an outpouring of melody to change the song up.

For the most part, the album is musically uncomplicated and simply melodic. The record's title track exemplifies that in a way that would convey comparisons to proto-punk rockers The Saints, albeit with Sennett & Hirst being a touch more refined but still tough and impassioned.

They also don’t like to overdo things either. Their lead single clocks in at just less than two minutes. It could have looped around to the four minute mark and it would have still been a great track because it does leave you wanting more. ‘The Thing That Gets Me Down Is The Boredom’ is just over two, but there is a sense that when it’s done it’s done and they're moving on.

Religion and war are the topics in question on ‘White Phosphor Fireworks’. A track that benefits from its '60s jangle and chime approach that floats somewhere between The Byrds and The Yardbirds. It’s the approach that breaks up the brutish ‘Beautiful Girl (She Sleeps On Her Breath)’ and takes it to the brink of a more psychedelic sound.

‘Jane Asher Said’, an ode to a lady who famously kicked Paul McCartney in the can publicly on T.V, is another of the album highlights. The mix of drums, bass and guitar instantly grab your attention and although the track is about one man’s crushed heart, it’s hard not to crack a wry smile until the song comes to a close with an improvised heartbeat monitor that was lurking in the background as Sennett sings “In her heart you meaning nothing”.

What the duo have delivered on, however they got together, is a great garage rock album, where Hirst’s hybrid pub rock drum kit with '70s Drouyn toms and Sennett’s trusty Telecaster through some vintage amp will be welcomed in pubs and venues alike, and whilst it may not be considered the most vital album of its genre, it certainly isn’t lacking vitality.

Crashing The Same Car Twice is available from amazon and iTunes (Australia).