SPT.IMG.012 Celica Statesman – Demountable

Zacc (Halal, How Are You?, Top People, Yard Duty, Meat Tray, MeaTTraY, and Slite Incline) and Stef (Yard Duty, Meat Tray, Sob Story, and Teen Dream) spent years playing (and living) together in a few bands that performed sporadically around Sydney, and usually in support of our much cooler mates in bands that people actually cared and continue to care about (Dick Diver, Country Teasers, The Stevens, Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys, Red Red Krovvy, Housewives, Ruined Fortune, etc). 

It all started in a sharehouse on Abercrombie Street in Chippendale, inhabited by members of M.O.B., Whores, Circle Pit, Raw Prawn, Robber, Collarbones, and Champaign Lyf. One of these inhabitants was the drummer, John Wilton (of Canberra fame), who played in the first form of Zacc’s firstwave dolewave band Yard Duty, and the sharehouse served as that band’s habitual rehearsal spot. 

It also became the venue where Zacc taught Stef how to play guitar, and the pair spent countless hours practising and writing songs together while smoking copious loads of cannabis. As well as playing card games, street cricket, and day drinking. 

Stef eventually moved into Zacc’s place on Despointes Street in Marrickville, opposite the cop shop, where they continued to play guitar together, writing and recording tunes on the computer in the middle of the living room, abusing substances, and indulging in gaming and porn addictions when they should have been studying or working. They also played a lot of basketball. 

The music they were making was intended to be the catalyst for their new band, Celica Statesman, produced as demos to entice more members so that they could play support to whatever combination of members from Total Control, Sex Tourists, Naked On The Vague, Dead Farmers, Low Life, TV Colours, or Destiny 3000 decided to start a new band with some new combination of members of currently existing or recently defunct bands. And if they couldn’t find a drummer or other band members, they were just going to use the Roland MC-303 Groovebox that Zacc had learned to sequence for the beats that served in the final incarnation of Yard Duty (the version who never recorded and only played live once at a house show in Glebe, sharing the bill with Territory) and the initial state of Meat Tray (who played as a three piece with the Groovebox as drums that also only played once, also in Glebe, before expanding to the mighty four piece that probably fathered a few Sydney crusty metal bands). 

Unfortunately, from Zacc and Celica Stateman’s perspective, and the perspective of Sydney’s underground DIY scene, Stefan had to move back to Canberra, and their songs were locked away for almost ten years. And it’s time they were heard, even if the band never did open for Enderie or Cured Pink or Lucy Cliche or Knitted Abyss or Holy Balm or UV Race or Royal Headache or Constant Mongrel or Boomgates or EXEK or Kitchen’s Floor or The Lewers or Lower Plenty or Vincent Over The Sink or Negative Gears or Oily Boys or Orion or Russell St. Bombings or The School of Radiant Living or Scott & Charlene’s Wedding or Terry or Twerps or Woollen Kits, et al. 

Demountable is a compilation of some of those songs, made together and immediately following Stef’s Sydney departure. These songs have been sequenced into a coherent album and mastered by Zacc. The songs are about Reddit famous Goldeneye 64 speed runs, dead dads, sex workers, addiction, desperation, and elation. They’re about regrets and things we forget. They’re about missing your mates and friends that fill your soul.