| Hammer the Hammer | |
| Cover: | Hammer_the_Hammer_single_cover.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | The Go-Betweens |
| A-Side: | Hammer the Hammer |
| B-Side: | By Chance |
| Released: | June 1982 |
| Recorded: | January 1982 A.A.V. Studios, Melbourne |
| Label: | Rough Trade |
| Producer: | Tony Cohen |
| Prev Title: | Your Turn, My Turn |
| Prev Year: | 1981 |
| Next Title: | Cattle and Cane |
| Next Year: | 1983 |
"Hammer the Hammer" was released as a stand-alone single by Australian indie group The Go-Betweens. It was released as a 7" vinyl record on the Missing Link Records label in Australia in June 1982[1] [2] and by Rough Trade Records in the United Kingdom in July,[3] [4] with "By Chance" as the B-side. Forster considered that "By Chance" was a personal break-through for him.[1] Pitchfork Media describes "By Chance" as sounding "more than a bit like the early Smiths.[5]
According to music journalist Clinton Walker "Hammer the Hammer" was about McLennan's growing taste for narcotics encouraged by a proximity to the Birthday Party.[6] McLennan however denied that the song was about drugs and in the liner notes for the band's compilation album, 1978-1990, he describes it as being "an incomplete meditation on loneliness and violence, sometimes mistakenly thought to be about drugs".[7]
Forster described the song as, "Grant's first great pop tune. An urgent, melodic verse, a foot to the floor chorus - its lyric just the repeated title. Perfect. From his earliest songs I found his lyrics surprisingly oblique and melancholic."[8]
The band recorded the two songs at Armstrong's Audio Visual (A.A.V.) Studios in Melbourne, at the same time as The Birthday Party was recording Junkyard.[9] It was during these sessions that the two groups decided to collaborate on a song. The result, "After the Fireworks", was a Forster/McLennan joint composition with the lyrics by Nick Cave. It was subsequently released by on Au Go Go Records (ANDA-22) under the name Tuff Monks.[9] [10]
Reviewed in NME at the time of release, it was described as, "Miscreant pop music attempting to disgrace its fealty to any number of sources. It seems to stumble when a stride is called for and winds up notating needless obscurities. Vacancy trussed up as abstraction is not the stuff of success, in any sense."[11]
The Guardian describes the song as an "odd, punkish sort of folk rock, deceptively primitive and sometimes rattlingly suggestive of the Velvet Underground."[12]
| Date | Region | Label | Format | Catalogue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 1982 | Australia | Missing Link | 7" vinyl | MISS 33[13] |
| July 1982 | United Kingdom | Rough Trade | RT 108 | |