draft of a review of a Don Walker album from August 2013

I wrote this bunch of cliches and almost thought I'd written a record review, then realised, fuck this is poor. So you can read it ten years later OK.

Don Walker

Hully Gully

Sometimes the smart thing to do would seem to be to wait before passing judgment, and in the case of a new Don Walker album I would like to take about five years just to be sure. Of course that doesn’t suit the people who paid for/released the record, or the people who promote the shows to promote the record, or the artist himself I would imagine. Certainly all of them could validly point out that, considering Walker’s last solo album Cutting Back – released in 2006 – remains one of my favourite albums of the 21^st century, it’d be at very least contrary to be finicky about passing judgment on this one. So, of course, I will naturally concede that this one’s already got me in its grasp, and after only a few quick and cursory listens I can tell that it’s a doozy, perhaps more pop (perhaps more facile, or maybe just less miserable) than Cutting Back, but still brilliant.

I don’t especially buy into Walker’s various mythologies; to a certain degree I think they are a front that keep him away from writing about his true self – caveat being that anything other than a very abstracted version of his true self wouldn’t really connect with anyone, and he’s probably right. His true self is a respected and moneyed songwriter who surely has no need to ever work again – a million miles from, for instance, the drifter protagonist in his song ‘Young Girls’ or most of the other narrators in his songs. For all that, there is no particular reason why a great songwriter should write about his ‘true self’ – who cares and why would they? – anymore than a novelist should always write autobiographically. It’s part of the weirdness of the Australian class system that Walker, an artist with working class origins, made his fortune and his name writing Cold Chisel hits which remain the soundtrack to umpteen working class Australian lives and gave everyday Australians icons like Barnesy, continues to write about people he cannot know anymore if he ever really did, (and in fact who are probably by and large a fiction now if they ever really existed) but now for a slender portion of the public. Don Walker is too weird for most people!

It’s funny also how Walker is genuinely one of the great lyricists of our time, but how often his music doesn’t come close to the brilliance of the words – you can imagine this may well be deliberate (not only does flashy music get in the way of great lyrics, but it would also intrude on the laconic and/or even-tempered and/or suppressed rage of the various stories told).  The way Walker sings is a counterpoint to that. It’s a natural voice, unusual for a singer, a bit nasal, just slightly higher than you might have imagined, but completely appropriate to the disappointed middle-aged man tales within. (Exceptions to both of these include the title track and the marvelous mid-paced ‘On the Beach’).

[END] 

chiz

I got on the bus this evening and the radio was playing ‘Cheap Wine’ (I was expecting it to be playing the last number one in the world, so there you go). I was once again reminded of so many interesting but not necessarily wonderful things about the Chiz, eg the good tune/ bad singing/ good and bad guitar coming out of the one amazing guitarist/ the line about rocket fuel… you know, all the things. I was surprised to see on facebook a few weeks ago some people full-on having a go at the Chiz when they failed to realise that what they were having a go at was that turkey Barnesy, but the Chiz are one of those muslim constructions indicating nothing is greater than god by having an imperfection, and that imperfection is the Barnestoermer himself. There was a moment, I don’t know if you know, when Barnesy quit the Chiz – this is before they had a record deal – and Mossy took over. Mossy is not only a guitarist’s guitarist, he’s a grouse singer. And so Chiz played with Mossy as singer for quite a few months, I think Barnesy had replaced Bon Scott in some band or other the name of which will return to me and I will put it in here when it does. And then he quit that and went back to the Chiz. Awful. But the worst thing is that tosserama Gudinski saying he wished he’d signed Chiz but when he heard their demo tape, Barnesy wasn’t singing (like, that’s a reason not to like them). Remember that joke from the Simpsons, I got Paul McCartney out of Wings? Well if only someone had got Barnesy out of Chiz forever… Don Walker’s (and the others’) amazing songs, and the incredible band, and Mossy up front. They would have been the greatest band in the world, instead of what they were, the greatest band in the world with a little pus-filled gutbucket up front belting out a kind of modified robot baby scream.


Whatever. Gudinski then signed Mossy and Mossy had a number one hit, so what was his problem with Mossy? Don Walker’s last album Cutting Back continues, for my money, to be a complete work of absolute genius, which keeps producing new greatnesses, so I am right into that, and I think Walker is in some ways a great bush balladeer whose music isn’t quite up to his lyrics (like a lot of great lyricists, think of Bob Dylan, if you like Bob Dylan), but it certainly has room for great musicians to work within, as ‘Cheap Whinge’ (as any song with Barnesy singing it could be called) shows.



I recently witnessed a quite good conference paper about oz rock and western Sydney in the 80s. I was up for it. I still think that oz rock is a misnomer; there’s no such thing in terms of sound (Icehouse was ‘oz rock’ as much as Chiz or anything else you care to name of a guitar-power chord persuasion; and for that matter, to take a random example and as much as they’re – or because they’re so – despised, the Angels were often as post-punk as anything else; think of the similarities, for there are so many, between the Gang of Four and ‘Take a Long Line’). I think the Angels are unfairly despised in many quarters. I admit I agree the later 80s saw them get a bit too hair-metal at least for my taste or the 21st century’s, the earlier stuff was very hardy. I advise you to reassess at the earliest opportunity.

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I have been greatly enjoying Don Walker's book Shots. Some of it is pretty grisly. But that's Don Walker. I like this track too. The last time I saw it on YouTube some bright spark had cut the Walker half of the song out, thus creating bad art. Much of DW's solo work and the work he released under the name Catfish is very fine.