Shooting At Unarmed Men - 'Triptych' (Too Pure) Released 14/04/08

Jon Chapple does it his own way. Having left Mclucky and Wales behind, ‘Triptych’ is SAUM’s third record. It’s the first Chapple’s organized from Australia, where he now dwells. And you will and you won’t recognize it. Chapple writes simple punk, pop, Nirvana, Pixies songs. Mclusky rocked, and they were fucking hilarious. Shooting At Unarmed Men’s first album (Soon There Will Be…) rocked, and was fucking hilarious. It was like the Breeders: understated, sassy and smarter than the rest of the stuff he’d penned.

‘Triptych’, like second record ‘Tinnitus’, isn’t like that. ‘Tinnitus’ was like a big wedge of angry rock, but not so deft. 'Triptych' is pissed off and obnoxious, and Chapple has the astounding ability of managing to sound like more of a cunt when he sings than anyone, ever. He baits the listener (“Put your oar in, or get the fuck out of my boat”), like a kid who doesn’t care if he gets beaten up and sticks his figures in his ears and goes “na na na na” just to get on your titting nerves. He doesn’t give a fuck about you, or me, and that’s the way we like it.

Curiously though, ‘Triptych’ has gone proggy. The punk aesthetics remain sporadically, while some tracks knock about doing not a lot for five, six, even seven minutes. But he’s John Chapple, and he’s such a distinctive and powerfully charismatic bastard that if you like the way he rolls, you can’t help like the tunes he rolls out: ‘Sometimes The Best Thing You Can Do Is Die’ kicks bile bilging ass, ‘Peristalsis’ is top-notch irreverence.

But some of ‘Triptych’ is just plain bad, even if it is a piss take. ‘The Conventions of Stopping’, as you might expect, doesn’t stop. And Chapple’s way has always been to fuck with us, irritate us, be a dick for the sake of being a dick, like a good punk-rocker should do; but this time its boring. The same goes for ‘Full Proof Plan For Successful Living’, which drones on and does nothing and pleases no-one. As if to emphasize the unconventional approach he’s taken on this album, its split into three discs, with four tracks on each.

It’s worth comparing Chapple to the other Mclusky members, plugging away in Future Of The Left, who’ve produced one album to SAUM’s three, but a more focused and vital effort. It would be fair to wonder where Chapple’s direction has got too, and whether he’s deliberately sacrificing quality for quantity, or whether he just don’t give a damn no more.