"Look, I realise that someone gets touted as the new messiahs of guitar-bandism every week at least - House Of Love, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr. And great they all are, too. But Straitjacket Fits (deep breath) have got it all over the lot of them. Compulsive, compelling, and totally exhilarating." (Andrew Mueller - Melody Maker April '89, reviewing them in Sydney, Australia).

Gulp. Deep breath indeed. Maybe Mueller's hormones were playing up that night. Maybe it's because the guy's Australian and biased toward the Antipodean resistance. Or maybe he was right. I can confirm The Straitjacket Fits are compulsive, compelling and (sometimes) totally exhilarating after seeing them three times in New Zealand - I started chucking up names like Husker Du, Television and Punk Rock, oh, foolish heart. Never mind, I think I was right too. The band: John Collie (drums), Andrew Brough (guitar, vocals), David Wood (bass) and Shayne Carter (guitar, vocals). Carter's the lynchpin, the main songwriter, a face for 1990 too. So we interviewed him; a perspective from the Southern Hemisphere to read for when they finally play under Northern lights.

* * * * *

What about a history lesson to start with? Bored Games was your first band.
"That was many moons ago, basically a high school band, as a direct reaction to seeing The Sex Pistols on TV, so definitely a young punk band. Wayne Elsey was the original bass player but left to form The Stones, and Terry Moore came in, who later joined The Chills. There were a couple of part-time bands, one called The Cartilage Family with Peter Gutteridge (now fronting the very revered - by Peel especially - Snapper - MA), which was funny because it was an obvious play on The Partridge Family but neither of us realised that our names, Carter and Gutteridge...a weird coincidence. We were a bit shocked. We split up because he came along with this one-chord drone which I couldn't relate to, and he got pissed off with me playing too many chords. Then there was The Doublehappys with Wayne and John Collie and then we formed The Straitjacket Fits, and then Wayne died mid-85. I made one single between them, called "Randolph's Going Home". It's apparently going to be released on a compilation in England too, via a cassette-only label that's going onto vinyl called Xpressway in Dunedin. A guy by the name of Alastair Galbraith was wandering around Europe and connected with some guy in Edinburgh who's going to put it out."

The single was about Wayne's death (in a train accident)
"Yeah. It was a very important record which I regard as the piece of music I'm most proud of so far."

Do you try and invest your lyrics with as much importance as "Randolph" or do you like the throwaway lyric as well?
"Not throwaway. I don't think I can always get as intense as "Randolph" because it was an over-the-top and unexperienced, heavy thing, because so much went into that song, something you can't contrive, but I think the lyrics definitely have to mean something. There's been a definite shift in my lyrics in the last year. They've become a bit more laconic, rather than getting beaten up by various things like before. When I look at some of my lyrics and think what they're written about, some of them are quite twisted, but that's the writer's luxury."

Your reputation in New Zealand paints you out to be a bit brat-arrogant, the "snotty punk sneer" type...do you agree?
"(Laughs) I don't think it's really up to me to say. It would all depend as regards to what really. I can change, whether you're talking about my approach to English football, or life. But music has got to have an arrogance to it, which can indicate a confidence or an emphaticness in whatever's being expressed. It goes hand in hand with rock'n'roll, the fall-on-the-floor doer, the real thing...I think it definitely gives an outlet to one side of my personality, but that's definitely laboured if there's only one part of you that's being projected. I don't think you have to run around and share the whole part of you."

You're a big pussycat at heart?
"I'm a bit of a soft spot in ways, but I wouldn't describe myself as Christian."

Do you find that English and American bands act up - that they have too much pose and 'attitude'?
"I don't think there's any room for pretentiousness. I think if you're real, it's a lot more frightening than having to pretend you're something else - if not frightening, then unsettling anyway. To be real than having to contrive."

What should people know about the band?
"I think one of the really good things, which we especially found in Australia, is that they couldn't put their finger on the band or easily slot it away because there are so many opposites in the band, and that comes down to respective styles and approaches of Andrew and I - he's definitely more melodic and I'm definitely into the melody things as well but a bit more wiggy, while he holds it a bit more together as far as guitars go."

He's a bit more reverant to the song.
"Definitely. I think I'm more abrasive, in the musical sense anyway. I think a lot of what I'm trying to do which comes out in a lot of our best stuff is that the music can get quite chaotic at times, but there's always this really strong core that's threatening to wig out but that something holds it together."

Is the Album that came out in New Zealand substantially different to the one Rough Trade are putting out?
"Definitely. It was a totally conscious decision on our part that we wanted to be represented by the two records, as a best of combination. We weren't that happy with the album that we did. There were a lot of factors we weren't happy with, and a lot of reasons why that happened. I don't think the band were captured in the right way, so with the removal of the weaker tracks, plus the EP, makes it a far fairer representation of something I can feel reasonably comfortable about standing behind."

What did the EP capture the Album sometimes missed?
"A sense of spontaneity really. It was that adage about the only mistake in rock'n'roll you can make is to be too careful about it. That attitude hung over the making of the album, on the EP, the band had no expectations whatsoever, no pressures either. It was a purer response, totally uncontrived. With albums, to a certain extent, you have to contrive a situation, but hopefully we've caught sight of that a wee bit. Plus the album was recorded in a big studio and we didn't really know how the equipment worked. We had to trust a producer and it got out of our control. We want more of a say in what's going on."

Were you surprised by the fervour of the English press as a result of "Life in One Chord"?
"It was good. We've had our good press all along the way so it wasn't that much of a surprise, so it depends on how seriously you let critical comment affect you. It was encouraging, but it basically affirmed what we believe anyway. The music that's coming from this neck of the woods is equal if not better for a number of factors to what's going on overseas."

That Melody Maker review..."Straitjacket Fits had it over all of them..." that'll raise some peoples' expectations.
"Yeah, and I think we'll deliver something too, but it all depends on what that something is. All that critical comment has been really encouraging and made it easier to twist people's views towards our way but we're aware of our weaknesses too, more than other people. We try not to ride on it too much."

What music do you rate enough to mention in print?
"Nothing really. Maybe it's because I'm getting old and jaded, turning 25 and only five more years to go before I reach the rock'n'roll retirement mark. I probably can't see clearly anymore. I can see how they do it too so that takes off the thrill. There are pockets, and lots of bands I can appreciate - I have listened to a lot of stuff from Britain recently, Spacemen 3 sound like 'Street Hassle' times 10 to me, Loop sound like a less interesting, more stoned Snapper (current New Zealand demi-Gods - MA), The Butthole Surfers, The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr have all had their moments. Closer to home, The Headless Chickens have been really good recently, they've got their mutant dance thing a lot better focussed, The Jean Paul Sartre Experience have been doing some good stuff, Snapper when they've got it together have been really good, but that's the old story about finding inspiration close to home."

Isn't that surely a kind of..
"Blindly parochial? No, it's true."

There must be some built in bias there...you might feel differently when you see these bands live.
"Oh, sure, all the bands I've talked about, including us, none of them have got close to capturing how good they can be live. I think that could be the curse of the punk babies, in that you never really worried about conquering technology or capturing your sound - the best records have been done on four-track. I'm really looking forward to seeing some bands. Sonic Youth came here, and they were good, I could appreciate them, but I wonder sometimes whether critics are too afraid to comment and losing their hipdom."

Have critics punished you yet?
"(Short pause) nothing really comes to mind. We haven't had many bad printed reviews but there are lots of little comments that come from unpublished critics. I can tell you that the bands in Australia are pretty bad though. Apart from the odd glorious exception over the years, I think the standard of Australian bands has been pretty lousy. We saw some particularly appalling ones when we were over there. The way the circuit's set up, the bands play 300 times a year and churns out bands like The Hoodoo Gurus and The Johnnies, which isn't condusive to music with any edge or any originality, apart from the odd mutant exception. When New Zealand bands go there, the approach is so different that they really appreciate it. They're really looking out for the Flying Nun bands."

What do you think makes New Zealand music so much more interesting?
"Probably the old thing about the isolation, I suppose. Breeds an arrogance and confidence. It gives you the distance so that you can have a better filtering device to sort out what's true and what's not as far as stuff coming in from overseas. The world's so small that you do get your hands on everything, but I think being a wee bit removed [is] quite valuable."

But doesn't Australia also benefit from that isolation?
"No, Australia is so similar to the States, or aligns itself to the US quite heavily, even in its culture, even in the United States. It's basically a pot-pourri of a whole lot of ethnic groups and hasn't really got much of its own heritage. It's also wiped out its indigenous people as well. The States has taken it under its wing in quite a few ways, politically too."

New Zealand is more independent on that basis?
"New Zealand is totally snubbed by the White House. It's something like North Korea, Iran, Libya and New Zealand are the only countries that the US refuse to host the leaders of. They'll talk to the National Party representatives (NZ's right-wing party, currently in opposition - MA). They refused to meet our Prime Minister Lange - he didn't get an audience with Bush but he got one with Yoko Ono, who took him through Strawberry Fields."

Because of NZ's anti-nuclear policy presumably?
"Yeah. One of the newspeople said to Yoko Ono, 'would your husband approve of the New Zealand stance?', and after replying yes, Lange said, 'and my wife does too'..."