Anachronistic Australian bar-room rockers the Money are so full of testosterone it’s a wonder they can walk upright. Turbo Nicko (guitar), Slick Trigger Mick (guitar/vocals), Doctor Rock (bass) and Liam (drums, obviously the quiet one) are purveyors of a cheerful balls- to-the-wall-and-everywhere-else garagey rock ‘n’ roll that makes no concessions to originality, sophistication or subtlety. Theirs is music by brain donors for the same constituency. It’s the perfect soundtrack to a lads’ night out — if your idea of a good night out is 19 pints of lager, two packets of fags, a good ruck and a curry, followed by a round of copious vomiting on your best mate’s Docs.
Recorded live, although it sounds as if the band outnumbers the audience, It’s a Shit Business is the quintessence of cock-rockist predictability — sensitive meditations on smoking, drinking, having a good time, girls and having a good time, all to the accompaniment of cranked-up heads-down riff ‘n’ thrash. Apart from a couple of covers (including the Dead Boys’ “What Love Is”), the Money play the same song over and over; to be fair, they do give it a different title each time (“Blackhearted Beast,” “Cigarettes,” “Wild Machine” and so on). Above all, this remarkable document of the straight white male’s native medium begs the question, “How much more straight and white and male could this be?” The answer, of course, is “None more.” Indeed, when listened to at the right volume, It’s a Shit Business has mysterious transformative properties: it can actually turn women into men, blacks into Caucasians, gays into heterosexuals (or maybe not: after all, the boys do seem to protest their masculinity just a little too much). If you give the Money a shot, you might never be the same again.