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“My name’s Ivan. My occupation…”

There’s a distinct appeal to your biographical/confessional style of songwriting, largely due to the allure of its conversational tone. It catches your attention and it’s meant to. It would be bad manners at this point to just get up and walk away after someone has made an introduction. That technique is as good a hook for a song as any, and moreover, it’s genuine and lends an element of pathos, whether fictional or real. Suzanne Vega knows what I’m talking about, Eminem and Weezer to a lesser degree, and so too, New Zealand’s Headless Chickens.

“Gaskrankinstation” could almost be a taped conversation set to music, if it weren’t for the comedic undertones that make Ivan sound like more of a twisted caricature than a real person. I like him though. He’s friendly enough. Seems like a decent guy on the outside, the kind of guy you’d have a beer with down the pub. It’s easy to get reeled in by his tormented monologue that falls out seemingly unprovoked, and over that dramatic dun-da-dun-dun-DUN-DUN beat and mechanical groaning, you realise what an unbalanced man he is.  He takes pride in his job, boasting “those cars wouldn’t go very far without me” but then as quickly as he puffs out that chest, it’s all gone seconds later when he speaks of his wife belittling him . The next time she’s mentioned he’s mimicking her with a grim (and quickly regretted) threat of violence.

As the song progresses you feel the cracks in Ivan widen and the desperation coming through. The video clip that accompanies this song is essential viewing. You watch Ivan as he goes about his job, filling up cars, wiping down windscreens and talking about his life, cackling insanely about his two friends (“They’re both called Dave and they don’t know how to behave…”) and his poor wife who just wants more than this. The lyrics are as potent as they are nightmarish and disturbing. The breakdown in the middle, where the synth and sequencer backing turns into a climactic barrage of guitars and drums becomes deafening as you feel Ivan fighting with the voices in his head. As a side note, two members of my family actually worked in petrol stations in the ’70s (but thankfully bore no resemblance to Ivan).  They cranked the gas, filled the pumps, worked the nights and came home stinking of petrol.  One of my early toys as a kid was a wooden, hand-made, hand-painted Shell petrol station with pumps and everything. No wonder I identified with this song on some level. I was filling my own cars at the same time I was learning how to walk.

It’s easy to find Ivan a pretty loathesome person, but you can’t help to sympathise. He‘s trapped in a consumer-driven world where for our ends rarely match our means and there’s an ever-widening gap between them. The irony isn’t lost that Ivan doesn’t drive (“When I walk home from work” — which, yes, is an assumption on my part), yet he has two televisions  and the wife is pressuring him for a child. When he suggests “Maybe I’ll take up the piano again” you know he’s grasping at straws, and the heavy sarcasm of “most of the time everything is just swell around here” is funny but fools nobody, least of all Ivan. It’s already assumed, long before he relates the vision “and my head is looking down from the edge of the brink. That’s my body…” that this is the prelude to a suicide or worse. But as the song builds up to that screaming crescendo, Ivan is a near frenzy, shouting “As long as my heart keeps pumping/I guess I’ll just keep pumping gas” but pairs this with an existential moment whilst passing a church (“I wonder whether there is a god?”) and the repeated phrase “I look but I don’t see anybody in there” doesn’t bode well. The song might seem like it’s of limited relevance to most people, but it’s as interchangeable with any occupation you could think of, and part of me believes this song would be hilarious if it wasn’t bursting with moral dilemma.

Released in 1990, “Gaskrankinstation” was the last single from the Headless Chickens before the addition of vocalist Fiona McDonald. Formed in 1985, the band were signed to the highly regarded Flying Nun label, releasing their first EP in 1986, and a further 3 albums and close to a dozen singles between 1986 and 1998, culminating in a number 1 hit in New Zealand with “George” in 1994 taken from their third album Greedy. Initially sounding like a cross between Suicide and Severed Heads, Headless Chickens opted for an experimental electronic/avant rock approach to making music and used synthesizers and samples to full effect. After their debut album Stunt Clown in 1988, “Gaskrankinstation” would be seen as the mid-way point in their career before the band evolved into a more creatively and commercially successful entity in a time where the dance music/sample culture was at its peak. The core of the band at the time of “Gaskrankinstation” was Chris Matthews (Vocals/Guitar/Keyboards), Michael Lawry (Keyboards/Samples), Grant Fell (Bass) and Bevan Sweeney (Drums).

After an absence of over a decade, the Headless Chickens recently reformed for a few dates in New Zealand and Australia. Realising that this was a good time to reengage with the band, Webcuts spoke with Chris Matthews, chief-Chicken and songwriter of “Gaskrankinstation” to give some background and insight into the song and the history of the band.

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