"It's life, you know?": Culture Abuse and What Happens Next

Photo: Alice Baxley

“What do the Ramones sound like?” David Kelling asks. “They. Do. Everything. It’s all been done. But it’s about having fun and getting a feeling across.”

Culture Abuse’s vocalist is calling from a service station midway through a UK tour. The band, who originally formed in San Francisco, have been in Europe for almost two months. They’ve played a bunch of shows - including opening for fellow Bay Area punks Green Day at Hyde Park in London - but their focus while overseas has, unusually, been on new music.

The Ramones have come up in conversation because of So Busted, the first song to emerge from the band since the arrival of their debut LP. Released by 6131 Records last spring, ‘Peach’ distilled their grin-inducing mash of pop hooks, hardcore energy, hazy distortion and Kelling’s droll vocals into a whole that slowly lit a fire in punk circles.

So Busted feels a little different from the outside. It’s more reliant on guitar jangle and easy west coast charm. To Kelling, though, it’s cut from the same cloth as its more rugged predecessors. That’s where Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and friends come in. You want three chord punk? You got Blitzkrieg Bop. Ambitious power-pop? They made a Wall of Sound record. Politics? Visit Bonzo in Bitburg. They. Do. Everything.

So, Kelling hopes, can Culture Abuse on album two. Right now he’s not setting any goalposts. “I feel like So Busted is there along with the other songs,” he says. “The songs are in there. It’s just how they get performed. You have Nothing Compares 2U that Prince wrote, but then Sinéad O’Connor plays it. It’s going to be whatever the songs need.”

‘Peach’ worked because it allowed people to say ‘fuck it’ along with the band. At the time of its writing Culture Abuse were being chased out of San Francisco by gentrification, living in their practice space and dealing with the loss of close friends. But their record came to be about finding your happiness, wherever it might be.

At the heart of that was the wild nature of their live show - which remains loud, chaotic and indebted to hardcore free-for-alls - and Kelling himself. He has cerebral palsy, which affects almost every aspect of his life, and each time he gets on stage it sends a message about what’s possible. “Gotta gotta gotta live the way you wanna,” he sang on Chinatown. “Gotta gotta gotta be the way you're gonna. Gotta gotta gotta love just who you wanna.”

“With ‘Peach’ I wanted a feeling,” he says. “With the lyrics I was trying to speak from the heart. At the end it came out. It’s weird to think of the next record and try to predetermine a concept and not just go with the feeling. The world is fucked. The world is fucked. But sometimes you want to hear a love song. You still have emotions. You still get tired. You still are hungry. You still have love. And then there’s this outside world. It’s life, you know?”

Since putting out ‘Peach’ Culture Abuse have signed with Epitaph, one of the most recognisable punk labels out there and a staple of Kelling's youth. They’re writing now with more eyes on them than before, but aren't entertaining any external pressure. “If we just keep trying to create what we want Culture Abuse to sound like, that is doing exactly what we would do with no outside influence,” Kelling says.

After their day out at Hyde Park the band headed for Italy, playing here and there while staying with friends on the coast in “bumfuck nowhere”. They worked on embryonic ideas in a barn among sunflower fields before flying to Amsterdam, where their label’s European arm is based. There they met Scott Goodrich, who produced ‘Peach’, rehearsed, smoked a lot and demoed for a couple of weeks straight.

“It’s been really fucking cool,” Kelling says. “We tried recording a song a day. Every single day just working on a new song. But also it’s finding the approach to it. Every day was a little different and got closer to what we wanted. By the end of it we were cruising along making some crazy shit.”

Kelling describes the band’s process as feeding his ideas to the Culture Abuse machine. That means their reinterpretation by multiple competing personalities and styles. And, while ‘Peach’ is the sort of record that you’d happily let blow your speakers, there’s plenty woven into it to suggest that further turns into straight up power-pop would be a good idea in future. Every avenue, it seems, is open.

“I hear it in my head,” Kelling says. “It’s just getting it to that point. Articulating it is sometimes hard. It’s going to make you want to cruise around in your car or rock out or put your headphones on and nerd out. We want an all-round staple."

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