The Vacant Lot: Living Underground 7

Description

The Vacant Lot are a first wave punk band from Canberra that released one lone EP in 1981 on the Thought Criminals label, Doublethink Records. They played a few gigs and broke up shortly after. What they left behind was a bit of a head scratcher for most with two songs of rough and tumble KBD/MurderPunk/proto-hardcore and two songs of pulsing, keyboard driven post-punk in the Wire – Chairs Missing vein that once sold out, sort of faded into obscurity. Now with a 2022 remaster from Mikey Young and a renewed vigor for creative activity since 2014, Living Underground finally gets the proper reissue treatment. Faithfully and lovingly recreated to be exactly the same as the elusive original issue.

Our take: Iron Lung reissues this obscure 1981 single by the Vacant Lot, who were from the Australian capital city of Canberra. The date and location might be misleading, though, because to me this sounds like it could have come from the UK circa 1978, just as the original post-punk bands splintered off from the first wave of punk. As with the early recordings by Wire and Joy Division, the Vacant Lot seems to sense two paths leading away from punks inspiration: one leading toward an even more stripped-down, aggressive sound and another moving in a direction thats more complex and eclectic. The two tracks that bookend Living Underground are in the former vein, reminding me of tracks like Joy Divisions Warsaw and Wires 12XU, ramping up punks energy not so much because theyre more pissed off, but as an exercise in minimalism. On the other two tracks I can hear some of the reggae and funk influences that ultimately shaped the post-punk scene, particularly on the very Public Image Ltd-esque Shes Really Dead. Multinationals is the strongest track, though, a more aggressive song that recalls the Murder Punk classics, but with a squelch of synth for the weirdos. Its very cool that Iron Lung Records rescued this one from obscurity.