Perfect Pair: Mismatch Brewing’s Mismatch Draught X Talking Heads’ ‘Road To Nowhere’
Tumblers and turntables at the ready...
SLEEVE NOTES
Mismatch Brewing Co: In 2013, six Adelaide mates got together to ‘brew some good’. They were from unlikely professions, except for their brew-meister whose name you couldn’t make up (take a bow, Ewan Brewerton). The mismatched mates resisted getting too highbrow when it came to selling beer but wouldn’t compromise on using the finest grains and hops, water filtration and strict cellaring.
Talking Heads: David Byrne was an aesthete anda design student who could clearly get highbrow when he needed to. In the ’70s and ’80s, Byrne and his band of new wave warriors frequently went off-piste with tracks like ‘Psycho Killer’, ‘Life During Wartime’ and ‘Burning Down The House’ – faintly dystopian numbers that even dabbled in French lyrics. Yet here was the kicker: their songs were so damned cute, everyone wanted to join the party.
TASTING NOTES
Mismatch Draught: Draught is a slammable end-of-day bev when your singlet is starting to sag at the armpits. While you can certainly slam the 4.2 ABV Mismatch Draught, you can’t damn it for being coarse: Mismatch has done its usual thing, taking a workaday brew and engineering it to be better. So forget all thoughts of flat, bitter beer and expect instead a clean, lively lager with malty notes and a hint of honey. This highbrow drop knows what it’s talking about – even if it’s hiding behind a legacy of men with hard-earned thirsts.
Road To Nowhere: A musical journey that’s forever fused with the zoetrope image of David Byrne running on the spot, ‘Road To Nowhere’ starts with a working class gospel choir revealing that their life leaves them feeling uncertain. It remains for TalkingHeads to show them the way – with a marching band drum beat and a maniacal, driving refrain that is unstintingly cheerful. Byrne manages to take highbrow conundrums like the mundanity of life and inevitability of death and turns them into a down-home hootenanny. Nice trick if you can do it.
IN CONCLUSION
Cracking a beer at the end of another hard day is a faintly religious moment – a time for brief reflection and giving thanks for getting past whatever small obstacles life throws at us. But as the Mismatch Draught makes perfectly clear, this is no time to get caught up in high-falutin’ thoughts and crafty footnotes. It’s time to take that second pull of luscious down home lager and get into the rhythm of the moment. Because, this is the truth of it: deep down, we all know where the road is going. So smile– and take that ride.
