A Review of Custard's Loverama

(This article was originally written almost a year ago, as an album review for a magazine published by my university's student radio organization. This version incorporates some suggestions made by a creative writing professor.)

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I’ve come to realize that I have a weakness for bands whose target audience is middle-aged, somewhat nerdy, white men. Frankly, I don’t know what went wrong. My parents are both big 90's pop and R&B fans, and groups like TLC and Boyz II Men served as the soundtrack to many days spent helping clean the house. As of March 2023, however, my all-time top artist on Spotify is They Might Be Giants (of “Istanbul, not Constantinople” fame), with dad rock icons Fleetwood Mac following closely behind. 

 

In my defense, I will say that underneath their unassuming appearances, a lot of these bands have a knack for approaching complicated, at times morbid, topics in an interesting and accessible way. They Might Be Giants’ favorite subject to sing about is death, and Fleetwood Mac’s most popular album, Rumors, is about relationship issues, lyrically made up of jabs at past relationships, attacking people who were usually in the studio recording the song with them.

 

The latest band in this vein to plague my listening history has been the Australian indie rock band Custard. Founded and fronted by David McCormack (whose husky voice is now known to many as that of Bandit in the hit kids' show Bluey), the band combines punchy guitar work with a tongue-in-cheek lyrical style to deliver short and sweet pop songs that often make fun of themselves or the music scene. One of their most popular singles is “Music is Crap,” in which drummer Glenn Thompson explains how aliens came to him in a dream and told him how all music sucks. Most of their work follows this sort of pattern, but their 1999 album Loverama sees the band take a turn into decidedly gloomier territory. While they mostly retain their carefree tone, it is Custard’s surprisingly nuanced approach to the idea of moving on that makes Loverama their best record to date. 

 

The 90's were an eventful decade for Custard. In 1995, they got their first hit in the single “Apartment,” a driving, almost frantic rock song that became an instant favorite of alternative stations across Australia. More successful singles followed, and by 1997, the band was touring the country alongside acts like Weezer, Frank Black, and Beck. After years of recording, performing, and promoting, however, the band began to slow down. The combination of a disastrous attempt at an American tour, the growing internal cracks within the group, and personal issues the band members were facing made it abundantly clear that the next project they sat down to record had a chance of being their last. 

 

I was first under the impression that Loverama was just another Custard album. On first glance, it has that same unabashedly geeky, sleazy charm that most of their work does — the title of its first song and leading single, ‘Girls Like That (Don’t Go For Guys Like Us)’, should clue you in on the kind of people that popped this album into their car stereos regularly. Once I put my headphones in and looked past the song titles, however, I found myself noticing something deeper, something more forlorn, brewing beneath their typical sarcasm.

 

"It’s more lovelorn than love lust," McCormack said in an interview with alternative station Triple J, "I like to think of it as our most bleak and negative album that we could possibly make with no redeeming features, except that you can dance to it." 

 

I couldn’t have put it better. Loverama is a blast to listen to: drummer Glenn Thompson and bassist Paul Medew lay down a solid, thumping foundation for Matthew Strong’s driving lead guitar playing and McCormack’s gawky delivery. The band’s firing on all cylinders here, pumping out groove after groove that’ll, at the very least, get your foot tapping. Lyrically, however, Custard sound a little different from their typically lighthearted selves. The shift is most noticeable on songs like ‘Nervous Breakdance’, in which McCormack gets uncharacteristically direct about trying to get over a breakup, assuring himself that the pain will be over soon while he frantically looks for any sign that it really will. Perhaps the most poignant example of this is the album’s closer, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’, a sort of reenactment of the awkward, circular conversations you have with any ex. McCormack, it seems, finally has the chance to get back with the nebulous ex he’s been yearning for the whole album. Instead of desperately asking for them back, though, he seems to have recognized that it’s time to move on. “I’ve already answered that question,” he retorts to the ex’s increasingly frustrating inquiries. The conversation goes in circles as the music builds, culminating in an explosion of strings and guitar. The song ends on a line that some argue hints at his own feelings about Custard’s impending breakup, “nostalgia’s all I’ve got to look forward to, in the end.”

 

It was on my fourth or fifth listen-through of this album that I noticed one of my favorite things about it. It’s at the tail end of the song “The New Matthew”, one of my favorites off the album for personal reasons, and in typical Custard fashion it plays out as almost a joke. The lyrics are a vague reference to difficulties guitarist Matthew Strong was going through at the time, and the music video sees the band half-playing along and lip syncing along to the song in a storage unit with a cardboard cutout of the absent Strong. Looking past the tongue-in-cheek video, there’s an undeniably wistful air to the song, arguably reflecting their fatigue after years of touring and promoting. This sleepiness doesn’t last long, though. On the album version of the song, at around the 3:12 mark, you’ll hear someone ask “The fuck’s going on? It’s a party”. An entirely different song begins to play, a short funk interlude that leads into the obnoxiously catchy “Ringo (I Feel Like)”, Custard’s best (and thankfully only) attempt at a disco song. When I first noticed the transition, I was a little amused. They’re hiding, I remember thinking, attempting to make a joke out of their pain and keep the party going like nothing happened. As I did more research though, I found myself questioning this idea. While McCormack admits that a lot of their wide-eyed, youthful enthusiasm had been sapped away by years of touring, recording the album was not the sob-fest I’d imagined it to be. In contrast to their last two albums, which were recorded in studios across America, Loverama was recorded in their hometown, Brisbane. This proximity to home made recording the album not only easy for the band, but for those close to them: Strong’s parents contributed claps to “Hit Song”, while McCormack’s dad contributed lyrics to “Funny”. Martin Lee, a friend of the group and drummer of Brisbane band Regurgitator, often came by the studio, drinks in tow.

 

Loverama was a huge success for the group. It peaked at #19 on Australia’s ARIA charts, the band’s highest charting album to date, and it would eventually become their most commercially successful. ‘Girls Like That’ became, arguably, the band’s biggest hit, ranking #3 on Triple J’s Top 100 in 1998. Reviews of the album were generally favorable, with audiences praising the album’s eclectic mix of garage pop, disco, funk, and country, as well as the more introspective writing on the second half of the album.
The album’s success would be their last. Soon after the release of Loverama, Custard went on a six-month hiatus. Their hiatus would continue into the new millennium, eventually becoming a full-on breakup, announced alongside a greatest hits compilation aptly titled ‘Goodbye, Cruel World’. 

 

A lot of the public reactions I’ve seen to the breakup express the same sort of pity; the kind of sentiment you’d see poured out for a show canceled too soon. “Very enjoyable album,” user Mr_Busby laments on Loverama’s rateyourmusic page, “they ended on such a high note”. I have to say I empathize with them. I think I’ve always had a hard time letting go of things. When I was little, I cried for a week because my mom was going back to work after a weekend with us at home. I couldn’t sleep the night before my high school graduation and struggled to walk up the football field to get my diploma. It’s hard for me to close chapters of my life. I’ll admit that I’m a creature of habit, I love routines and familiarity and I struggle to willingly give these comforts up in pursuit of something novel. Despite this, I’m able to recognize that their attitudes are a little misguided. 

 

Endings, of bands or of relationships, are often seen as spectacles. The breakup is an event to behold, a fiery explosion of who said what, and understandably so. In a sick sort of way, it’s fun to watch these bonds stretch and break. It’s hard not to want to listen to the news surrounding the latest one. Picking sides and starting arguments is something that can be fun for decades. After all, people still argue about who broke up the Beatles (it was John, not Yoko).

 

I don’t think Custard was one of these cases. While the increasing creative differences and disagreements within the band could suggest that they could have gone through some behind the scenes fight, Loverama and the press around it never seemed angry or bitter. Interviews done around the album’s release date saw the band being as insufferable as ever, providing meandering, made-up, half-answers to simple questions as they always have. Custard’s break up was a recognition of the fact that the band was no longer able to reconcile their diverging goals and ideas. It was just time to move on.
 

"It was like the last week of high school," McCormack explained, "everyone except Paul was moving out of Brisbane, everything was changing”. A lot did for the group in the years following the breakup. McCormack moved south to Sydney, keeping busy by founding and fronting a few new bands, starting a soundtrack collective, and, eventually, settling down to start a family.

 

My friend Charlie often tells this story about a book they've read. A divorced professor is invited to their ex’s wedding, and instead of making up some lie to slip out of attending, the professor suddenly accepts ever gig he’s ever been invited to. He sets himself up for a dash around the world, attending conference after conference, giving speech after speech. He wants to send the message that he’s doing fine, that he’s booked and busy and is flourishing without her in his life. It is in a brief moment of respite on this mad trip that Charlie found the story’s most poignant moment. One of the professor’s acquaintances is sitting with him, seeing right through his act. Love isn’t wasted, he tells him. The time that the professor and his wife spent together wasn’t wasted. The love existed and is gone, but the time that they shared, the things they saw, and the lessons they learned will remain with him forever. Just because it has ended doesn’t mean that it ceases to matter. 

 

I don’t think I’ll ever be at peace with moving on. I know for a fact that I’ll struggle to walk up to the stage at my college graduation, and that the day I finally, officially move out from my parents’ house will be a tearful one. Despite this, Custard and their album Loverama have shown me that the process doesn’t have to be so terrifying. Sure, you mourn the end of a relationship, but there’s nothing stopping you from dancing while you do it. You can write songs knowing that they may be your last, but you should make them as obnoxious and light-hearted as you always have. Moving on, they seem to argue, is difficult - but it’s not the impossible task that it's often made out to be.