Gippsland's Cheap-Skate brings ratbag garage punk to the fore with debut single 'I Don't Mind'

Gippsland’s Cheap-Skate proves there’s plenty of room for 90s-fuelled ratbag garage punk with the debut single, ‘I Don’t Mind’ now out, and providing the soundtrack for your next skate sesh.

Cheap-Skate is the product of Blaike Murphy, who started the act as a solo project, before recruiting bassist Jonathan Sanguinetti, and a handful of semi-permanent artists from other various local bands.

‘I Don’t Mind’ blends lo-fi, garage aesthetics, and brattish guitar lead break from the get-go. There’s elements of surf rock bleeding through, with the hookish ‘ooeeewoooeeeoo’ vocal take. Clocking in at just under two and a half minutes, it’s slacker punk that deals with feelings of a past relationship and the internal day to day struggles.

Of the track, Blaike tells of how the song evolved from bedroom scribblings to a fully polished, slamming take.

“I Don’t Mind’ came from a folder full of demo’s I had laying around that needed to see the light of day. The lyrics were semi-written on the spot, so they can be interpreted however you want.

I had the track mixed by the lord himself, Darcy Handley, and then handed it off to the eminent Christopher Vernon to master it, both of which managed to polish these bedroom demo turds into playable and enjoyable tracks,” he said.

‘I Don’t Mind’ is the first of several tracks to come from Cheap-Skate, so keep your eyes and ears open.

‘I Don’t Mind’ is streaming on all digital platforms now.