About The Rich
What?
Why?
How?
When?
The whole concept of The Rich is the brainchild of R.T.C.Ennis; he writes the songs that he wants the whole world to sing. An art school dropout, he has been writing music ever since he can remember. Banging away on the parents' grand piano as a kid, playing guitar as a teenager, giving it all up for visual art, giving up art for writing, giving up writing for music.
There would have been more twists and turns no doubt, but Feral Media and SBS stopped him in his tracks, put him on the straight and narrow: they wanted an album. This was serious, too much for one man, and so The Rich was born as a band, not just an idea. R.T.C Ennis called upon his brother Michael to add guitar, Patrick O'Neal for the bass and Doug Galethwait for the drums. In just six weeks disjointed songs were given structure, ideas were thrown out, new ones added to the repertoire, the new players gave some sense of groove to the music often played at a frantic pace, they added their own influences and the whole thing moulded itself into one complete sound. The Rich was alive!
The perceived nihilism of post modernity has thrown up the punk aesthetic one more time, but this time The Rich are the vanguard of this movement and things will never be the same again. They proclaim to the world that they are the sum of nothing, making sounds in an age of disposable music and 99 cent downloads that get lost in directories and archives because too much (music) information is never enough.
This is true post-punk, not just a rehashing of an old style, they are not calling for anarchy, just the realisation of an existentialist inevitability.
The Rich have a manifesto, a kind of mantra, which says that the only freedom we can ever have is to be anti-everything, even anti-anti. It goes round and round, like a dog chasing its tail, but if you try hard enough, at some point, a certain velocity is reached and you become free of the gravitational pull of ordinary cultural production.
You can see this manifesto in every aspect of The Rich. They are punk and anti-punk, rock and anti-rock. With their name they are playing with the duality of contemporary meanings and ideologies. Using irony they claim to represent a social minority that struggle to have their voice heard in rock culture. The Rich are not laying the claim of being maladjusted youth, all angst and pathos. No, they realise that between an audience and an artist there is a type of power struggle, more Weber than Marx, and by sheer force of will The Rich attempt to come out on top.
So this is not some branded outfit pretending to be the disenfranchised, this is the disenfranchised pretending to be the Establishment.
It's all Italian suits and gold cufflinks; gentleman scholars playing fucked-up-pop-punk.
The aesthetic is something like: Wedgwood meets Westwood.
A chaotic dialectic.
Simple Economics might be post-punk, post-new wave, post pop, contemporary retro; call it anything you like (they really don't care). The fact is The Rich are an action packed four piece that go off with a bang every time you press play.
None of their songs are meant to mean anything, so heart felt love songs sit next to angry anti social ravings.
Ultimately, the sound is based around just about every style of pop/rock guitar that has ever been done over the past 40 years, its been twisted, distorted, deconstructed and reconstructed into a new sound that rings true to the listener the first time round.
Throughout Simple Economics you hear The Velvet Underground, heavier stuff from the Saints, and even eighties sounds from bands like Jesus and Mary Chain or The Church. It's a mish-mash; a strange recipe that only seems right after you have tasted the finished product. When you hear Simple Economics you know The Rich taste good, real good. You will get hooked.
For information on upcoming gigs click here.
