UV Race: Dancing music you can punk to

by Scott Wilson

It’s 9 pm on a Monday. The Intrepid Quip Writer enters the Empty Bottle, a boozatorium in the Ukrainian Village of Chicago, one well-known for its eclectic lighting fixtures and sturdy, well-made stage.  For the next three hours, Quip Writer perches himself at the bar, keenly listening to bystanders’ conversations, trying to overhear an Australian accent that would mark a member of the Melbourne-born UV Race, and occasionally accosting audience members whom he suspects of being foreign. At one point, two men approach the bar and ask, in what sounds like a dialect, to sample the “Point Lager.” Surely these men are strangers to this land because who the hell lives in the Midwest and has never had Point Lager? They brew it up the street in Wisconsin and sell it at every corner store for five bucks a six-pack.

“Hey, hey guy, are you, like, in the Australian band? You sound like you have an accent.”

The man says no.

“Oh, sorry bro, haha, I’m like doing a story on them so like, uh…my bad.”

Turns out the man just has something in his mouth. The Bold but Overzealous Quip Writer read too far into the man’s speech pattern. Listening in on Quip Writer’s embarrassing repartee are six bemused spectators, two women and four men, jeering quietly amongst themselves, all looking fairly battle-weary as they’d been drinking since before Quip Writer arrived. Quip Writer later finds out that these six people whom he’d been sitting with for nearly three hours are UV Race in the flesh. Smooth one, Quip Writer.

Often, when there are six punk rockers on stage together, the sound becomes a little mushed. All the instruments fight for noise supremacy whether the amped-up player means to or not. Rollicking punk drinking ditties are soaked in adrenaline as a rule. It’s usually a curse of the genre, but in the case of UV Race, the drums, bass, two guitars, keyboard, and saxophone work together like jigs and pulleys on a fine-racing yacht – commandeered by pirates. The vocals are a little tricky to follow, though. Quip Writer considers himself an expert communicator, able to understand people from either coast of the United States, Mexico, and even Canadians sometimes. But the Australian lingua franca does not place an emphasis on clarity, especially when yelled in a three-person chorus over microphones. Despite not being able to discern the deeper meaning behind songs like “Garbage in My Heart” and “Malaria,” the audience chanted along with the Oy Oy Oy’s and war-whoops right on time. The language of rock transcends that of man.

The show’s crescendo towards insanity can be charted by an inverse ratio of how many clothes frontman Marcus wears at any given time. In the beginning, as the band and audience warm up to each other, he wears jeans and a polo. By half time the polo is off. By the three-quarter mark, he is down to a blue bikini bottom, stuffed with PBRs and dollar bills from the crowd. A tug of war breaks out between Marcus’s attire and an audience member but is broken up when a man attempts a flying stage dive onto the heart of the excitement. Not one to be cowed by maniac fans, Marcus leaves the stage and finishes the set without missing a beat amongst the jumping, pushing, swaying mass of the crowd.

Heads continue to sway, shoulders continue to jostle, and hips continue to bop until one in the morning. Like a firework, the show ends with a bang as the band flies off in different directions: to the bar, the merch table, two pretty blondes in the front, and Marcus’ pile of clothes. UV Race is halfway through its US tour, having explored from LA to Oregon, preparing to hook around the Midwest and then down to Texas. If Chicago is any indication of this Australian whirlwind’s power, many a stage will be shaken to its foundation in the next couple of weeks. And hopefully in years to come.