Special Patrol

Special Patrol have long since been one of my favourite bands, mostly due to vocalist/songwriter Myles Mayo's unique, smart, universal and phrase-filled acumen. Match this alongside a group of musicians that are intuitive with their interpretive backing and, to me, there lies the perfect package.

Following two great, but notably fledging, EPs Special Patrol released 'The Golden Mean' in 2004 to positive reviews and another couple of singles to their already impressive list of national and regional airplay. Yet despite a number of lengthy road trips and reasonable sales along the way, the album failed to catapult the band up on to the next level.

Where to from here, one may ask - why not bring out a concept album? A brave move by any band's reckoning, let alone one from little 'ol Adelaide.

"A lot of it's drawn from real life and from friends and family," explains Mayo, "and people from everywhere we've been in the last couple of years. To make the story really interesting I had to make a certain element of it up," he readily admits.

"The album essentially follows three characters: George Duffield and his high school sweetheart, Emily, and myself, I guess. It's about how we all grew up together and how we've dealt with all the things that have happened; like the split between us all and then the tragedy of George's eventual demise. George goes off to try to make it as an actor; although he realises that all along he has this beautiful girl that loves him he wasn't happy with just that and he wants more. He then goes searching and he realises that there's nothing really out there so he comes back and realises that he's thrown away the most valuable thing to him, which is Emily who's now married with kids but also has a massive drug habit. So George throws himself off a building because of all that," he concludes with a slight laugh, possibly in response to any thoughts of him sounding all too soapie.

Quite the contrary; 'Handy Hints From The Undertaker' not only sees our narrator intelligently enter into some extremely ambitious territory, the rest of the group appear follow the album to wherever it wanted to lead them to.

"Yes, I guess we did try to remove ourselves a lot from what we were," says Mayo of the band's new direction. "I reckon there's several reasons for that, the first one being that it was recorded over 18 months in different studios and then mixed in different places. We thought we'd get a different sound for each song and that's something that we wanted because with 'The Golden Mean', as much as we liked it, it was all done within a month in the same studio with the same people, so production-wise they all came out sounding very similar. I think that writing in character can also make one song sound angry because the character's angry, while the next song would sound all warm and humble and nice because of the way that character may be feeling."

"Basically we felt the need to get back in and do some stuff so we all went over to Sydney and started recording and got a whole lot of tracks done there. With some of those tracks that didn't turn out well we just thought we'd put them aside until next time, but then we came back home and recorded some more here."

With the album's second single, Changing Emily, still doing the rounds on the radio, keep an ear open for the next installment; the interminably entitled, The Continuous Story Of Gorgeous George And His Plight To Take On Hollywood, and follow George and his pals as they take the road to ultimate destruction, attempting to seek absolution for their youthful misadventures. And as for Myles Mayo and his current bunch of mates, who knows?

Steve Jones

Special Patrol launch 'Handy Hints From The Undertaker' at Jive on Fri 1 and Sat 2 Sept.