New Video: Peter Bibby Shares Boozy “Bin Boy”

Peter Bibby is an acclaimed Fremantle, Australia-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, whose music career started in earnest when he turned 19: He quit the unfulfilling job he was working at the time to busk, eventually landing a few paying gigs. Sometime later, Bibby landed a high-paying job that he eventually lost, because he would frequently show up hungover from the gigs he’d play the night before. 

So the Aussie singer/songwriter and musician played even more gigs with a series of different backing bands, including Frozen Ocean, Fucking Teeth and Bottles of Confidence, gradually developing a rough and tumble sound and approach that a critic describes as being like “Shane McGowan screaming at bleeding laudanum and typhoid hallucinations” with his guitar described as being like “a dog drunk on rum.” 

With the release of his first two albums 2014’s Butcher/Hairstylist/Beautician and 2018’s Grand Champion, Bibby proudly championed — and has been championed for — being a working class and wholeheartedly independent artist, which was documented in greater detail in the 2018 film Chasing Palm Springs, which followed Bibby on a cross-country trip from Perth to Melbourne in a temperamental van. Since then, the Fremantle-based artist has begun to build a growing profile and reputation as a must see act, as a result of a rowdy and raucous live set —  and through headlining shows and international festival circuit stops at Laneway Festival, Falls Festival and SXSW.

Bibby’s third album, 2020’s Marge saw the acclaimed Aussie collaborating with Dog Act — Pete “Strawberry Pete” Gower (bass) and Dave “Dirty Dave” Taylor (drums) — and derived its name from Dave Taylor’s grandmother Marge. The titular Marge is prominently featured on the album’s over art, smoking a cigarette on a beach in Darwin, Australia, seemingly watching her corner of the world go by. 

Sonically, the album is splintered and volatile and written as a sort of soundtrack to a surf movie from hell, where there’s blood in the water, a dirt road leading to a dead end — and everything is covered in diesel fumes and dust.  “The Dog Act and I recorded this album in a week off in Perth between two Australian tours. We were match fit and full of beans,” Bibby says of the album. “It features a selection of songs, some fun, some completely bloody miserable. It was made better by the involvement of the fourth Dog, Mitch McDonald, who engineered the record and offered endless energy and ideas. I love this record.”

Produced by Dan Luscombe, whose work with fellow Aussies The Drones and JOVM mainstays Amyl and The Sniffers convinced Bibby that he’d be in safe hands, Bibby’s fourth album, Drama King was released last week through Spinning Top Music. The album was mixed with White Denim‘s Josh Block.

“It was the first time I’d worked with a producer, and I prepared for it knowing that my songs were going to get chopped up and shortened,” Bibby recalls in press notes. “I’m glad I did, because for the most part, Dan was like, oh, you’ve already solved every problem I had with these. He was completely underselling himself, because he shaped and sculpted every song on the record into a far more beautiful and articulate thing than I could have on my own.”

“Where Dan shaped and sculpted the songs into superior arrangements, Josh made them sound better than I ever thought they could sound,” Bibby adds. 

Although Drama King‘s material may have come together without major incident, the album’s lyrics reflect Bibby’s evolution from hard-partying prankster to a more enlightened, responsible human, who has grown up, and now knows when enough is really enough. Fittingly, the album’s second single “Fun Guy,” was an up-tempo, in-your fafe ripper built around a motorik groove, scorching guitars and relentless drum machine paired with Bibby’s punchily shouted lyrics and howls.

It’s the sort of song that’s perfect for furious calisthenics — or worse, Peloton sessions — while recalling some of the awful decisions and incidents informed and influenced by hard partying, hard drinking and harder living that you must stay away from — presumably because of all the shit you’re afraid of losing. But at its core, is the unvarnished honesty that comes from having lived the life that his songs talk about. Bibby has been the stupid, drunken lout, who has embarrassed himself and others. And he’s gotten tired — perhaps of not remembering what happened or why it happened; of being completely out of control; of being hungover; of the flop sweat-filled nights or mornings . . .

“I was just really over all the silliness and getting wasted and all dumb behavior that is considered ‘fun,'” admits Bibby. “A lot of the songs on the album are the result of situations where I was drunk or dealing with the drama that comes from it all. It suggests a period of change, and honing in on the shitty situations which have inspired it.” 

Bibby adds “It’s a fun song about quitting fun. A bit gross, a bit self deprecative, a bit of a banger. Rather than a drum loop, we just went full drum machine with this one, taking a few hints from Suicide’s first album. We laid this whole thing down in a few hours on my first day in the studio, setting the tone for a disgustingly productive few weeks.”

The album’s latest single “Bin Boy” is a boozy, Kerosene Hat-era Cracker-like tune featuring twinkling keys, strummed acoustic guitar, a shuffling and drunken rhythm, and a bluesy electric guitar solo serving as a lush, slow-burning bed for the acclaimed Aussie’s beer and whiskey soaked, plaintive delivery and a soulful backing vocal. The song hilariously anthropomorphizes a trash bin, and examines with a great deal of empathy, the one-sided relationship people have with their trash bins — with the song’s narrator lamenting its thoughtless treatment.

“Could this be the world’s first song written from the perspective of a wheelie bin? I think it might be,” Bibby says. “The song marks a clear connection between man and bin, how we are not so different after all.” He continues “I went full guitar hero on the solo and was very pleased when Carla’s backing vocals lifted the song onto a whole other level. I don’t think it was that easy for her to harmonize with my derelict vocal style, but she nailed it.”

Directed by Robin Bottrell, the accompanying video seems inspired by Harmony Korine‘s Trash Humpers and follows Bibby as part-man, part-bin in the suburbs being taken out on the curb and its contents — without Bibby, of course — being dumped into a garbage truck.