Despite the best efforts of satellite-radio stations and CNN documentaries, trying to distill an entire era of music into a tidy package inevitably yields myopic results. However, if you needed to provide a new listener with an instant snapshot of how alternative rock really sounded during the early 1990s in all its stringy-haired, secondhand-flannel glory, you could do far worse than Signs of Satanic Youth, the recently reissued 1993 debut EP from Australia’s Magic Dirt.
North American readers of a certain vintage might recognize the band as laggards of the post-Nevermind feeding frenzy; their first proper full-length, 1996’s Friends in Danger, had the misfortune of coming out on Warner Bros. in the U.S. at the moment when major labels stopped caring about finding the next Nirvana. But like fellow Aussie hopefuls You Am I and Spiderbait, Magic Dirt rebounded from their stateside failure by becoming an alternative institution back home, where their increasingly polished garage-rock maintained a recurring presence on the Australian charts and festival circuit.
In their infancy, though, Magic Dirt were a much gnarlier proposition, one that pulled various strains of scabrous ’90s guitar rock—from the apocalyptic screech of Sonic Youth and the constant unrest of early PJ Harvey to the grooving grunge of the Singles soundtrack—into their vortex. With Signs of Satanic Youth, we hear a band taking the tentative first steps out of the murky underground only to get pulled right back in, a tug-of-war that would arguably make Magic Dirt the only band in the ’90s who felt at home opening shows for Pavement and Silverchair.
This reissue marks the EP’s 25th anniversary, but it’s a bittersweet celebration. Magic Dirt’s bassist and co-founder, Dean Turner, passed away in 2009 from a rare form of tissue cancer, a devastating loss that seemingly spelled the end of the band until the announcement of a short upcoming tour. But getting Signs of Satanic Youth back in print was a long-standing wish of Turner’s, and it’s an especially fitting way to commemorate him, given that his ominous low-end was so integral to this formative phase.
Grunge was the product of fusing 1970s hard rock and 1980s hardcore; on Signs of Satanic Youth, Magic Dirt prefered to ricochet between the extremes, with Turner manning the gear shift that sends songs like “Eat Your Blud,” “Supertear,” and “Choker” careening between psychedelic sludge and mosh-pit mayhem. But if all that wah-wah splatter and bassline grime instantly fossilize the EP, the restless performances of singer and guitarist Adalita liberate it. Her tinfoil-chewing sneer and visceral lyricism (“Why do you always have to bleed on me?”) anticipate the raw-throat catharsis of Karen O and White Lung’s Mish Way. Moreover, her sing-outside-the-lines style on the raging “Touch That Space” and conversational candor on the yearning fuzz-pop reprieve “Redhead” point the way to the disorderly oration of Courtney Barnett, who admitted she had Magic Dirt on her mind when she wrote “Pedestrian at Best.”
Signs of Satanic Youth dissolves into a haze of backward-looping effects that blissfully undulates for nine minutes (and went on for another 25 on the original CD). It’s an early display of the latent experimental streak that Magic Dirt would periodically indulge on their subsequent path to Aussie-rock sainthood. But if the untitled piece’s initial function was to provide a moment of serenity after five caterwauling songs, it serves an even greater therapeutic purpose today—as a salve for a band still grieving the loss of a crucial member, extending the halcyon days of a life cut short too soon.
