"Hammer the Hammer" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by The Go-Betweens | ||||
A-side | "Hammer the Hammer" | |||
B-side | "By Chance" | |||
Released | June 1982 | |||
Recorded | January 1982 A.A.V. Studios, Melbourne | |||
Length | 2:50 | |||
Label | Rough Trade | |||
Songwriter(s) | Grant McLennan[1] | |||
Producer(s) | Tony Cohen | |||
The Go-Betweens singles chronology | ||||
|
"Hammer the Hammer" was released as a stand-alone single by Australian indie group The Go-Betweens. It was released as a 7" vinyl record on the Missing Link Records label in Australia in June 1982[2][3] and by Rough Trade Records in the United Kingdom in July,[4][5] with "By Chance" as the B-side. Forster considered that "By Chance" was a personal break-through for him.[2] Pitchfork Media describes "By Chance" as sounding "more than a bit like the early Smiths.[6]
According to music journalist Clinton Walker "Hammer the Hammer" was about McLennan's growing taste for narcotics encouraged by a proximity to the Birthday Party.[7] McLennan however denied that the song was about drugs and in the liner notes for the band's compilation album, 1978-1990, he describes it as being "an incomplete meditation on loneliness and violence, sometimes mistakenly thought to be about drugs".[8]
Forster described the song as, "Grant's first great pop tune. An urgent, melodic verse, a foot to the floor chorus - its lyric just the repeated title. Perfect. From his earliest songs I found his lyrics surprisingly oblique and melancholic."[9]
The band recorded the two songs at Armstrong's Audio Visual (A.A.V.) Studios in Melbourne, at the same time as The Birthday Party was recording Junkyard.[10] It was during these sessions that the two groups decided to collaborate on a song. The result, "After the Fireworks", was a Forster/McLennan joint composition with the lyrics by Nick Cave. It was subsequently released by on Au Go Go Records (ANDA-22) under the name Tuff Monks.[10][11]
Reviewed in NME at the time of release, it was described as, "Miscreant pop music attempting to disgrace its fealty to any number of sources. It seems to stumble when a stride is called for and winds up notating needless obscurities. Vacancy trussed up as abstraction is not the stuff of success, in any sense."[12]
The Guardian describes the song as an "odd, punkish sort of folk rock, deceptively primitive and sometimes rattlingly suggestive of the Velvet Underground."[13]
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Hammer the Hammer" | G. McLennan[1] | 2:50 |
2. | "By Chance" | R. Forster[14] | 2:30 |
Date | Region | Label | Format | Catalogue |
---|---|---|---|---|
June 1982 | Australia | Missing Link | 7" vinyl | MISS 33[15] |
July 1982 | United Kingdom | Rough Trade | RT 108[15] |