A good punk demo can feel either like a riveting mission statement or the fuck-around doodles of some booger trying to make their friends laugh. Kel Mason’s first bedroom-recorded outing as Gee Tee, in 2016, was the latter: a collection of goofy, sample-heavy punk songs about cars, flame decals, and driving too fast. This balaclava-wearing weirdo from Gold Coast, Australia named his project after a Rat Fink-adjacent muscle car illustration, and he rode the gimmick to an excellent 2018 self-titled album. In that underheralded lo-fi power-pop collection, earworm synth melodies and belligerent power chords showcased a songwriting talent capable of more than just easy punchlines. It turns out a song about loitering at the gas station can be funny and a banger.
Goodnight Neanderthal is a long-awaited follow-up for those who eagerly scooped up the last half decade of Mason’s prolific 7" drops, compilation spots, and Bandcamp loosies. Despite laboring over this collection of filthy bubblegum scuzz for the last two years, the Sydney-based punk ultimately settled on just 10 songs totaling 18 minutes of material. With a full band and the backing of the venerated garage-rock heads at Goner Records, he didn’t want any duds on this one. (“I get really picky about what I release,” he said of the album. “If I don’t think it rocks, I don’t see the point in putting it out.”) Two months before Mason sent it off to Memphis, he quickly wrote and recorded the majority of the album’s songs, scrapping much of what he’d done in the months prior. Goodnight Neanderthal bottles the energy of that spontaneous burst of creativity. True to his mission, the new album has no skips.
While Gee Tee is no longer defined by its early motorhead caricatures, Mason leans heavily into the project’s storied playfulness. The album’s title track is defined by a big gaudy keyboard melody oozing Technicolor joy, which is counterbalanced by a bunch of tough-guy shit. Fuzz-caked power chords chug along while Mason sings from his gut about how he just got bonked over the head by a big club. His resilience to blunt-force trauma isn’t his only cartoonish trait; Mason taps into a variety of exaggerated voices, lending each song a distinct vibe. He’s a nasal brat on “Bad Egg,” wondering over a killer rapid-fire guitar hook about a nasty smell in the kitchen. (Spoiler: It’s you—you’re the bad egg!) He’s a goblin with vocal fry on the burly “Heart Throb,” insisting that you can’t get enough of him even when this piece of shit cakes his hair in dirt and grease.
Unsurprisingly, Gee Tee also operates in the tradition of punk songs that find conviviality in horror and the apocalypse. “Within the Walls” pits rollicking carnival music against forces lurking out of sight. In one of the most joyous-sounding songs, “40k”—seemingly set in the universe of the tabletop classic Warhammer 40,000—Mason enthusiastically heralds the nuking of the planet. Over a spare, beautifully written keyboard line, the chorus is engineered for screaming along: “’Cause you’re dying in the 40k!”
Gee Tee have a reputation for rowdy shows, and Goodnight Neanderthal is full of songs that would thrive in a room full of beaming, sweating, shoving punks. Pop sweetness is balanced pretty evenly with scummy and distorted guitars, though the best song is its most subtle. Stacked next to the album’s boldest aesthetic moves, “Rock Phone” shows how much Mason can accomplish with a more minimal approach. The story is simple: Living in the future is a burden, so he ditches his smartphone in favor of a Flintstones boulderphone. Underpinned by layered guitars, the song manages to acknowledge the depression inherent in always being plugged in while also offering a universal plea that goes way back in the history of popular music: “Please call me on my phone.”
It’s not a Gee Tee album without a car song, and “(I Hate) Drivin’ in the City” is his best one yet. Staccato little synth stabs push forward relentlessly, and the chorus’ unbelievable guitar lick seems teleported from a ’70s hard-rock radio standard. Six years in, Mason is far away from the first Gee Tee demo: Instead of bragging about how sick his whip is, he’s riddled with anxiety and swears he’ll never drive in a big city again. His songs feel catchier and more robust than ever. Between this and “Rock Phone,” Goodnight Neanderthal is the most relatable record this Australian rock’n’roll cartoon character has ever made. Maybe Gee Tee never needed a car in the first place.
