Located on the Yorke Pennisula, a 90-minutes drive outside Adelaide, Ardrossan is a town noted for its deepwater shipping port and towering coastal cliffs of red clay. It's the home to the stump-jump plough and in 2014 it made headlines when six sperm whales stranded themselves on a beach outside town.Adelaide three piece Men With Chips were once stranded in Ardrossan themselves when their car broke down on the way back from a fishing trip. They wrote a song about the experience and have just released a video.Taken from their forthcoming album Attention Spent to be released on Homeless, the songs feels like an uneasy and agitated cross between The Spotlight Kid era Beefheart and Flipper, after a marathon session at Adelaide's Metro Hotel.The video is just as odd as the song and involves the band acting like some kind of free jazz Ghostbusters and a small kid eating potato wedges out of the mouths of people lying on the beach which is some metaphor for someone stealing the teeth of Ardrossan's dead sperm whales.Watch the video below and read a brief chat we had with the band's Joel Robertson.Noisey: What was your time in Ardrossan like?
Joel Robertson: A few years ago, on the way back from yet another fruitless crabbing trip we decided to stop there to try out the new chocolate Golden Gaytime; beautiful stuff. Luke (Kenny, drummer) likes to squeeze the last juice out of his cars, and unfortunately his latest bomb stopped ticking right there at Ardrossan jetty. So we were stuck on the beach for most of the day until a Greasy Uncle came to the rescue. He got the car going but told us "next time she stops, she won't start again". That's where the turtle comes from-- us crawling back to Adelaide in the old Mitsubishi, hoping she wouldn't conk out or blow up.The song mentions the six sperm whales that were stranded on a beach. Do you have any theory or idea of why whales beach themselves?
It was only a week or so later that the news came out about the tragedy in Ardrossan. I guess it hit us hard, having been stranded there ourselves-- it could easily have been us if Luke's uncle hadn't been passing through. The song explains the theory well enough: a sick whale heads in to shore to rest, only for the tide to catch them out. Then friends and family come to help but only end up getting stuck as well. A senseless waste of cetacean life. There is another theory that whales descend from cow-like landlubbers, and they come ashore looking for greener pastures. But we don't want to get into that debate.Whose idea behind the video.The story seems quite involved?
Nobody really knows who was calling the shots; everything was dictated to us via payphone texts and nasty letters from someone calling themselves Robantha. She seems to have a particular distaste for bicyclists, and she eats guys like us for breakfast. But Pat (Telfer, director) did a good job capturing her malevolent vision.'Attention Spent' is available Oct 28 through Homeless. Catch Men With Chips
Oct 15 - Adelaide at the Metro
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Joel Robertson: A few years ago, on the way back from yet another fruitless crabbing trip we decided to stop there to try out the new chocolate Golden Gaytime; beautiful stuff. Luke (Kenny, drummer) likes to squeeze the last juice out of his cars, and unfortunately his latest bomb stopped ticking right there at Ardrossan jetty. So we were stuck on the beach for most of the day until a Greasy Uncle came to the rescue. He got the car going but told us "next time she stops, she won't start again". That's where the turtle comes from-- us crawling back to Adelaide in the old Mitsubishi, hoping she wouldn't conk out or blow up.The song mentions the six sperm whales that were stranded on a beach. Do you have any theory or idea of why whales beach themselves?
It was only a week or so later that the news came out about the tragedy in Ardrossan. I guess it hit us hard, having been stranded there ourselves-- it could easily have been us if Luke's uncle hadn't been passing through. The song explains the theory well enough: a sick whale heads in to shore to rest, only for the tide to catch them out. Then friends and family come to help but only end up getting stuck as well. A senseless waste of cetacean life. There is another theory that whales descend from cow-like landlubbers, and they come ashore looking for greener pastures. But we don't want to get into that debate.Whose idea behind the video.The story seems quite involved?
Nobody really knows who was calling the shots; everything was dictated to us via payphone texts and nasty letters from someone calling themselves Robantha. She seems to have a particular distaste for bicyclists, and she eats guys like us for breakfast. But Pat (Telfer, director) did a good job capturing her malevolent vision.'Attention Spent' is available Oct 28 through Homeless. Catch Men With Chips
Oct 15 - Adelaide at the Metro