Let’s make one thing clear from the jump: ‘Taken By Force’, the second studio album from Melbourne punk band Civic, is not a concept album. That’s a little too highfalutin a term for a band brandishing buzzsaw guitars, played aggressively and at a breakneck pace.
But ‘Taken By Force’ is, technically, an album that was created with a wider concept in mind. That came care of lead guitarist Lewis Hodgson, whose vision could be summarised in four simple words: “1984 meets Endless Summer”.
“I immediately began to envision this post-apocalyptic landscape,” lead vocalist Jim McCullough tells NME. “I tend to create music quite visually – I like to paint it as though it’s an image in my head. It’s more about capturing a feeling than anything else.”
The ascendant punk band did something similar on their 2021 debut, ‘Future Forecast’, he says; NME thought that record’s melody-laced punk belters felt “like a full-bodied throwback to another era”. McCullough adds: “The feeling of that landscape was really present throughout. The difference this time around was recording in a landscape that felt so much like what I saw in my head.”
“We’re not trying to break down any kind of political walls or barriers with what we’re writing – it’s more about the vulnerability, rather than getting a message across”
The landscape McCullough is alluding to is the town of Elphinstone, which is over 100km out of Melbourne, with a population of just over 500 people. It was here that Civic set up shop for a week on a property owned by rhythm guitarist Jackson Harry’s dad. “It’s really out in the middle of nowhere,” describes McCullough. “There isn’t really any phone reception, there’s shotguns going off on the neighbour’s property next door. You walk across the train line to the one pub, which is next to the one post office general store… and that’s it.
“We really felt like we were living this record. I know that sounds a bit lame, but I really believe it. Existing in this space for such an intense period of time… it was almost like it was out of a play or something.”
McCullough recalls a day where the band were woken early in the morning by the sound of a siren going off. The apocalyptic din went on for minutes on end, with the singer running outside to figure out what was happening – “We were shitting ourselves. We had no idea what was going on” – all while recording it to a voice memo on his phone.
It turned out to be an alert for the workers of the local State Emergency Service to convene at their headquarters. “We were all frantically checking our phones at 8am, standing around out on the road in our jocks, and that’s all it ended up being. Still, to be going through all these thoughts and images and feelings of war, apocalypse, wastelands while you’re making an album… and then to be woken at 8am by this siren? Like, it’s pretty funny now, but at the time it was terrifying.”
“Once it leaves our hands and goes into everybody else’s, everyone’s gonna have their own interpretation… The fun is just seeing what happens”
The siren is one of the first things you hear on ‘Taken By Force’, as part of the instrumental intro track ‘Dawn’. It’s a fitting harbinger of things to come: a blunt, muscly rock record that’s constantly on edge as it targets everything from climate anxiety to bitter break-ups. As far as subject matter is concerned, McCullough is aware that it’s a much broader palette than the average damn-the-man punk record – and it’s a side of Civic he’s excited to show people. “It’s a little more poetic, and even a little more cryptic in parts,” he says.
“We’re not trying to break down any kind of political walls or barriers with what we’re writing – it’s more about the vulnerability, rather than getting a message across. We’ve all been in straight-up, no-nonsense hardcore bands – which is great, and still relevant and important. For us as Civic, though, we’re trying to just think that little bit more about what we’re doing.”
And what are Civic doing? McCullough muses on the tightrope act of songwriting for ‘Taken By Force’. “It’s interesting… you’re aware of what you’re writing about, and I think you have to be so you’re not just writing words to rhyme for the sake of it. At the same time, there’s some beauty in just blindly having an idea for a song and just running with it. It’s almost like your subconscious is spewing out when you write like that.”
The band were assisted in this process by producer Rob Younger, best known as the frontman of legendary Australian punk band Radio Birdman. The idea of working with Younger was aired by the parents of McCullough’s partner, who knew him personally. Initially, the frontman rebuffed the idea: “I was thinking, ‘there’s no way he’d have any time for us’. He’s probably never heard of us! When we got patched in together, though, we ended up talking on the phone for over an hour about music. Even before he walked in the door, we had trust in him that he’d do a good job.”
The ensuing week of recording ‘Taken By Force’ served as a resounding rebuttal to the truism “never meet your heroes”. For McCullough, who had long idolised the sound of Radio Birdman, watching Younger at work was an unforgettable experience. “He stayed in the room as long as we were in there – and we’d pull long fucking nights,” he says. “We’d be there until four or five in the morning and he never once went off to bed before us. He’d sit there and contribute, never losing focus. He knew when to drill us in order to get the take we needed, and he knew when to make the right call on certain songs.
“One track had this ripping guitar solo at the end, and we all thought it sounded really good – except Rob. ‘It doesn’t need to be there,’ he said. We pushed back, of course, but he insisted: ‘Just cut it and take a listen back again’. We did – and sure enough, it sounded better. We wouldn’t have been able to hear that ourselves, because we were so close to it. It sounds a bit corny, but he really did become part of the band for that week.”
Civic are striking while the iron is hot – they have a capital city album tour booked for March, a slot at South By Southwest (marking their first ever shows in the US) and more regional touring to come later in the year. The band even have sketches for a third album in hand. “We’re not gonna be King Gizz and put out 10 albums a year or anything like that, but we wanna keep at it,” McCullough quips. As for the immediate future of ‘Taken By Force’, the frontman can only offer a pensive que sera sera. “Once it leaves our hands and goes into everybody else’s, everyone’s gonna have their own interpretation,” he says.
“I would never wanna tell somebody how to feel, anyway. I think that just needs to be something people find on their own. I’m interested in hearing those responses, too – because I know for a fact not every one is going to be positive, and that’s totally fine. That’s the beauty in it, really. The fun is just seeing what happens.”
Civic’s ‘Taken By Force’ is out now via Cooking Vinyl Australia