WATCH: Shady Nasty – ‘Upwardsbound’

“NEVER WILL I EVER KNOW” goes the cry on Shady Nasty’s hellfire post-punk debut single, ‘Upwardsbound’.

You’ll scream it into singer Kevin Stathis’ face sometime soon I reckon, mutual spit flying across the space between band and audience. Reminds me of going through my La Dispute phase, catching them play an under 18s show at Irene’s Warehouse in 2010, where 16 year olds slammed into each other like amateur wrestlers, basking in the cacophony of angst and noise and Jordan Dreyer’s hyper-poeticised versions of heartbreak.

This isn’t to compare those two bands on any musical level though – Shady Nasty are cut from a wholly different cloth. ‘Upwardsbound’ is scattershot in all the different things it tries to achieve, but it succeeds in every area. Stathis’ wry, knowing vocal delivery; that pin-prick guitar, ascending over the verses. It all converges in a stadium-sized tremolo freak out, over which Stathis cries “but I can’t not feel that I’m sick with envy”. While the sounds Shady Nasty are bringing through aren’t untapped, their delivery is something damn original.

The video going along with ‘Upwardsbound’ has its own sinister edge, but somehow it achieves this with fruit abuse, dry ice, and some liberal head wobble. The band tries to keep up appearances in a cute domestic setting, but the instrumentation makes it sound like the world is ending outside.

As someone comments on ‘Upwardsbound’ on the group’s Facebook page: “there’s tunes, and there’s top notch ridgey didge grungey inner west makeyathink classic tunes”.

Check out the video below, directed by Anna Philips and Sam Brumby.

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