THE CRUEL SEA
Straight Into The Sun (Universal)
COME SUMMER, BECAUSE AFTER ALL there is no season that says Australia more than summer, newspapers, television and radio stations will run segments asking us for the most Australian sounds, the most Australian songs, the most Australian artists. It is the usual Australiana suspects each time of course, various shades of night sweats and wide open roads, of beer-less pubs and underarms in football clubs, of river camping and beach stomping.
You rarely hear someone say The Cruel Sea, yet there may be none more Australian a band than them. Or at least the Australians we tell ourselves we are: unfussed, unfazed, unburdened, but holding back something just dark enough to appeal.
The Cruel Sea fit this not just because you would swear sometimes that this is the ultimate surf band crossed with the perfect Sunday afternoon beer garden band, or the way the vocals sound either, and sometimes simultaneously, laconic and lethal, or even the Nellie Melba return of the band last year, seven years after the death of foundational guitarist James Cruickshank, and now this new album, their first in more than 20 years.
It is the way that all those play into a sense that this is a band that says who cares what you are supposed to be doing, just do this instead, this is what matters. That isn’t a straightforward “I don’t give a fuck” attitude – that’s stupid and lazy, and they’ve never been either – but rather “I’ll choose what to give a fuck about and it’s likely your suggestions won’t make the list”.
You’ll find that mood immediately with the country surf How Far I’d Go: in the smooth slide of guitar opening the door for Tex Perkins’ unrolling vocals; in the way space beckons between the guitars of Danny Rumour and Matt Walker (replacing Cruickshanks); and how the rhythm section of Jim Elliott and Ken Gormly (irreplaceable) steps only into a corner of that space. Perkins sings of shame and blame and there is a suggestion of wisdom gained, but enough vagueness about the direction – better or worse? – in the question of “just how far I’d go … for you”, to leave open possibilities.
If the title track looks like a smooth pop diversion – those oohs in the chorus are right creamy – with its twang on tight and its boots cowboyed, check out how Gormly keeps everything lithe, almost liquid. If King Of Sorrow (bearing a passing resemblance to The Police’s King Of Pain) wears a layer of hurt as Perkins, without the usual grain in his voice, wonders “if this grief will ever let me go”, it finds routes out as piano quietly asserts itself and low guitar reclaims the melody.
Reflecting their pre-Perkins roots as an instrumental band, this album eschews a lead voice a couple of times, but the principal remains. Or might even be enhanced, especially in the later arriving one, Storm Bird. This has the languid air of a body floating in still water, the drums played low and movement almost non-existent, while the “Hawaiian” guitar tweaks hopefulness.
But there is something slightly menacing about the countervailing bent-string guitar line and the revving of what sounds like an aquatic mower, and something more ambiguous in the wordless moan of indistinct vocals. Everything feels chilled, but you might want to keep an eye on the current.
There is a final Australian twist to The Cruel Sea. Here is a band which emerged from different strands of Sydney’s post-punk underground comfortably leaning into a very pre-punk style and sound that flourished in Melbourne but looked beyond the cities. One that for a minute looked like bridging town and country.
You can see it best in Anyway Whatever which has some of the parched surface and nourished heart of The Dingoes’ earthy soul. It opens out to wide skies and enervating heat, Perkins bringing a bit more raggedness around the edges and a keyboard hinting at flute, like some 1970s throwback. But there is a strain of isolation within it, an emptiness or perhaps the fear of it, that reinforces Perkins line about “a new horizon”, a state of mind like the moon that “does a good job disguising that it’s lonely and cold”.
Heat and bonhomie never quite banishing the possibility that we aren’t wholly comfortable here; a balancing of peripheral abundance and internal bareness; holding back from saying all that might be said; and all done at a tempo that says, nah, nothing to worry about. Could it be any more Australian?
READ MORE
A version of this review was originally published in The Guardian.
Comments