LISTEN: Hollywood Models – ‘Fare Evade’

It’s the kind of conversation you’ve seen played out hundreds of times over social media or during shit small-talk at parties where you don’t know anybody. Fuckin’ MYKI, mate.

Like the time when you got done for having your feet on the seat, and spent the rest of the day trying to fathom why anyone would make it their job to police that sort of thing. Or when they introduced on-the-spot fines but the bloke that got you before you could jump off at Vic Park to touch on neglected to mention the new system, positively bursting with righteous glee as he slapped your ignorant ass with a $233 fine.

Don’t worry though, Hollywood Models feel your pain; they get it. Melbourne natives all (with some members of punk outfit Chelsea Bleach), they’re a kind of novelty garage pop outfit that’ll remind you of something like the B-52s. On their debut track, ‘Fare Evade’, they extoll the pitfalls of being a poor uni bastard with a written-off car, using up 20 percent of their pay check to even get to work in the first place.

It’s pretty clear from the first mashed organ chords and fumbling bass that Hollywood Models aren’t necessarily trying to be ‘good’ in the same way most other bands working in Melbourne right now – and truth be told, that uniqueness stretches out to virtually every element of the Hollywood Models experience. Just take a look at their Facebook page: FILTH PITT on vocals? GLENN STEFANI on the mysterious ‘guitar twang’? Who the fuck are these people?

‘Fare evade on Christmas, fare evade on Easter, fare evade on New Years Eve,’ sings backing vocalist Svetlana Del Ray, as a sort of catch call holding the whole thing together.

Hollywood Models aren’t the kind of band you’re going to be linking your friends in your *~ V-SERIOUS AND COOL MELB SCENE MUSIC ~* Facebook group, though. They’re clearly more of an exercise in ridiculous aesthetic and stereotype than anything else – the tradie drummer, the beatnik bassist (?), the dorky scientist on keyboards and pads. Plus, they write songs about fare evading, so there’s that, too. Seeing the whole thing explode into life live is the right way to go – and you can, at their single launch on 29 May at the Workers Club.