Spiderbait

Spiderbait, a three-piece thrash pop outfit, rank among Australia’s most singular and enduring acts across the 1990s and 2000s, their singular appeal best grasped by catching them onstage. Mark Maher, known as Kram, handles the bulk of lead vocals while seated at the drums, which remain level with the rest of the stage rather than elevated. Alongside him stand bassist Janet English, who takes occasional lead vocals, and guitarist Damien Whity, called Whit. All three grew up in the tiny Southern New South Wales town of Finley, home to roughly 2,200 residents. Kram and Whit first played together during school years before Kram moved to Melbourne to study percussion and guitar at the Victorian College of the Arts School of Music, where he also picked up bass and keyboard. After dropping out in his third year, he returned to Finley and founded the band, deliberately choosing to learn music from the ground up alongside Whit and Janet English instead of instructing them in what he already knew. That decision produced a sound unbound by convention, veering without warning from jazzy instrumentals into frantic, distortion-heavy rock and pop. Their earliest shows were raw and unruly affairs. The initial indie releases—P’tangYangPipperBangUh!! in 1992 and the 1993 album Shashavaglava, whose title means “dickhead” in Yugoslavian—offered similarly unpredictable listening. After securing a major-label contract in 1995, the trio settled into a bolder, more assured approach. Their debut Polydor Australia album, The Unfinished Spanish Galleon of Finley Lake, paved the way for two further Top Ten releases, Ivy & the Big Apples and Grand Slam, plus extensive touring through Canada, America, and Japan. Janet English later launched the side project Happyland alongside Quan Yeomans of Regurgitator.