12 Songs: Stranded
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: historically speaking, nobody has ever done punk rock better than the Aussies. And when I say that, I want to make it clear that I’m really just talking a band from Brisbane called The Saints.
Their first album I’m Stranded just might be the only punk record that ever really mattered. It is, quite simply, the be all and end all for that specific brand of feral, anxiety-wrought, über-pissed rock and roll that we here at IB love so much. The guitar riff from the album’s title track is as iconic as any by the Ramones, Sex Pistols, or Clash, none of which formed until about two years after The Saints got their start; they’d been going at it for years by the time “God Save The Queen” hit the airwaves, which still sounds like a nursery rhyme when placed aside tracks like “This Perfect Day.”
The band spent their formative years covering classics by Little Richard and Ike and Tina Turner, blowing them up beyond recognition in terms of speed and energy; they quickly developed a reputation as one of the world’s most unhinged live acts in the process. Eventually, frontman Ed Kuepper’s searing, heat-lightning guitar tone was replaced by a more jangly, acoustic sound reminiscent of Dave Davies’ work on the earliest Kinks records and frontman Chris Bailey’s vocal chords got a much needed period of R&R on later gems in their catalog like Prehistoric Sounds.
We’ve curated some of our favorites from across their entire discography so you can form your own opinions, starting with the classics. Listen below. —Jackson Todd
