Go and have fun with Private Function at Sniester Festival

Private Function comes with ‘370HSSV 0773H’ to the Netherlands. Gleefully unpredictable and irresistibly fun. The Melbourne punks continue playing it short and dumb, to thoroughly entertaining results. Just wait till you get to the Coldplay cover…

It’s an understatement to say Private Function don’t take themselves too seriously. In fact, the Melbourne six-piece savvily split the difference between Cosmic Psychos-style yobbo punk tropes and more current piss-take party rockers. Their songs play it short and dumb, sporting spontaneous bubblegum choruses that demand you shout along – no matter how dodgy the sentiment.

That’s why they’re able to pull off something like 2017’s ‘I Wish Australia Had Its Guns Again’, or this album’s prankish Coldplay cover. Those moments get a huge reaction live, and they’re a whole lot of fun to burn through on record, too. It helps that Private Function songs are usually equal parts compact and explosive: on this third studio album, it takes five tracks for the band to finally crack the two-minute mark. It also helps to have a mouthpiece as animated and versatile as Chris Penney, who can freely jump between singing styles to suit each song’s disparate touchstones.

On ‘370HSSV 0773H’, the title of which spells out a rude greeting upside-down, Private Function cherry-pick liberally from the music they grew up loving. A powerful chapter in the story of a band who enjoy subverting expectations as much as they do blazing their own trail, their forthcoming release is pure and uncut Private Function, featuring blistering guitar solos, stadium-sized choruses, a brutal sense of musical intensity, and their customary influences appearing alongside names as diverse as Metallica and The Stooges.

Having spent the better part of five years crafting a solid reputation as one of the country’s most explosive, unpredictable and essential live bands, Private Function are an outfit whose on and off-stage reputation precedes them at every turn. 

Simultaneously combining their distinct brand of bratty humour and punk-rock irreverence with the majesty of rock and the pageantry of roll while continually poking holes in the genre, Private Function’s feverish following should come as no surprise to even a casual observer, with their devotees constantly riding the PF tsunami alongside them.  

Indeed, Private Function might strive toward the intersection of rock, punk and satire, but their new body of work proves they’re not just a group that should be taken seriously, but that they’re – most importantly – still on top.

Go and have fun with Private Function in Den Haag this spring:
25/05: Den Haag, NL - Sniester Festival