“Frontier Psychiatrist” by The Avalanches

"Frontier Psychiatrist" was the second single from Since I Left You, the Avalanches' 2000 debut, and it's a cut-and-paste fever dream built almost entirely out of other people's records. Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann, working under their alias Bobbydazzler, produced and arranged it (Tony Espie helped with the mix), laying the comedy duo Wayne and Shuster's sketch of the same name over a swooning orchestral bed lifted from Enoch Light's take on "My Way of Life". The songwriting credits run to Bert Kaempfert, Herbert Rehbein and Carl Sigman alongside the group's own.

The result is dizzy, gleefully absurd and somehow swings. It gave the Australian group their first taste of commercial success, reaching 18 on the UK Singles Chart, and critics lined up to praise the way they handled their samples.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.