The Blue Tongues unveil Mr Regular Man as Aussie band puts modern life behind an animal mask

What does a chimpanzee with a cappuccino and a laptop bag have to say about modern life? Quite a lot, apparently.

Australian band The Blue Tongues have put one at the centre of the music video for their latest single, Mr Regular Man, a psychedelic take on the routines we fall into, the masks we wear and the different characters we play depending on where we are.

The song takes aim at the “rat race” and the rigid structures that can quietly begin to define everyday life, without saying there is anything necessarily wrong with being regular.

Band member Jake Woodhead said the song was about people from all walks of life.

“The rigid structure that life can define us by and trying to break out of that mould, not to say that there’s anything wrong with that,” he said.

The song had been kicking around for more than two years before its official release, becoming a favourite at live shows thanks to its punchy chorus and closing riff.

Played by the band’s close friend Declan Montgomery, Mr Regular Man moves through the city with his laptop bag and cappuccino, boards the train, heads to work and follows the familiar patterns of his day.

He is joined by a cast of other animal-faced characters, including a pigeon and, appropriately for The Blue Tongues, a lizard.

“It’s to do with that (chimpanzee) being our closest primitive primate,” Jake said.

We already use animals to describe much of modern life. We join the “rat race”, enter a “dog-eat-dog world” and, somewhere between the two, attempt to climb the corporate ladder.

For The Blue Tongues, putting humans behind animal masks offered another way to play with how people move through that world.

“We put masks on, and we do have to pretend a little bit in different environments,” Jake said.

The idea of humans being animals dressed up for modern life is not entirely new territory for the band either.

Their first song, Atoms In The Sun, includes the lyric: “I’m an ape with a front door.”