Review - The Stripp - Life Imitates Art (Ghost Highway Recordings) - english version

 

In a world of records vying for attention through concepts and metadata, “Life Imitates Art” does the simplest thing: it just plays. It sounds as though it was recorded with the idea that, sooner or later, someone will have to take it onto a sticky stage, in front of an audience that isn’t prepared to cut anyone any slack. The Stripp hail from Melbourne’s underground scene (a place that has been churning out rock as if it were a basic necessity for decades) and here they blend Australian-style hard rock, high-energy rock ’n’ roll, punk edge and a certain power-pop discipline: three-minute songs that know when to kick in, when to bite and when to leave the mark of a chorus.

Officially released on 23 January 2026, Life Imitates Art arrives thanks to the support of an international alliance of labels. The Australian edition is handled by Bottom of the Barrel, whilst the US market edition is by Spaghetty Town Records. In Europe, distribution is handled by the Spanish veterans at Ghost Highway Recordings and the Swedish team at Beluga Records, whilst the French label Bad Reputation has released the CD edition.

Formed in 2019, The Stripp (Bek Taylor, vocals and rhythm guitar; Jason Zeke, guitar and backing vocals; Matt Brown, bass; and Andy Cass, drums) are the classic band that grows before your very eyes amidst soundchecks, tour vans and gigs where the band has to earn every inch of the stage. Having shared the stage with Supersuckers, ZEKE, Cosmic Psychos, Stiff Richards and Hard-Ons isn’t just a line on a CV: it explains why everything here is calibrated for the here and now. The songs have the pace of a live set — they come in, hit you, and get out of the way — yet they reveal a band that is learning to think in broader terms, without losing its club-house spirit.

If their 2022 debut, Ain’t No Crime To Rock’n’Roll, had the urgency and hunger of a first outing, here you hear a band that has learnt to make every note count. The guitars remain raw (garage, not boutique), but the sound is sharper: drums and bass drive like an old V8, and over the top are those choruses that smell of pub rock and proto-punk edges. There’s no unnecessary polish, rather a new attention to pauses, gear changes, that split second when a riff can become a hook. It’s classic rock ’n’ roll in its structure, contemporary in its urgency.

The main gain lies in confidence: the sound is fuller, the choruses more assured, the songwriting more attentive to detail. There is, inevitably, a downside too: when you push so hard on a specific identity, some passages can feel familiar, almost by default. But it’s a risk inherent in well-made rock ’n’ roll records: repetition becomes style, and style — when it’s solid — becomes a signature. Here, the signature is clear and, above all, credible.

The album opens with “If You Want Me”, which starts like a friendly punch: a compact riff, vocals to the fore, a chorus designed to be shouted from a wobbly table. The following tracks, “So Long”, which has a garage feel, and “Good For Me”, which races along at breakneck speed, combine immediacy with craftsmanship: no frills, just the sense that every guitar riff has a purpose. “Murder Mobile” slows the pace and lets the bass rumble, with that Lemmy Kilmister-esque shadow running through the song without turning it into a stylistic exercise. “Turn Back Time” brings in a more melodic vein (the line is rough power-pop, à la Joan Jett), whilst “Gotta Go” is a distillation of urgency: a headlong dash driven by downstrokes and straight-ahead drums, the sort of track that seems written to reignite the set when the crowd starts to lose focus. And then there’s the choice—far from ornamental—to ideally bring things full circle with a cover: “MF from Hell” by The Datsuns, played as a tribute to another generation of New Zealand/Australian rock capable of kicking up a storm with style. At the end, “The End” closes with a wry, dark smile, like when the lights in the venue come on and you realise just how much you’ve been sweating.

It’s not an album that sets out to change the rules: it prefers to remind you why certain rules still work. “Life Imitates Art” is tight, spirited, often irresistible when it hits the right chorus; and, even in its most straightforward moments, it retains that quality that distinguishes good craftsmen from real bands: the feeling that every track exists to explain, as perfectly as possible, why Australia has recently become fertile ground for some of the best contemporary punk rock bands, from The Chats and Amyl and The Sniffers to Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers. And The Stripp are no exception.

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