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jbhifi.com.auDECEMBER
2016
COLD CHISEL
Michael Dwyer ponders the ins and outs of Cold
Chisel's
Cold Chisel
('78)
,
Breakfast At Sweethearts
('79)
,
East
('80)
,
Circus Animals
('82)
, and
Twentieth
Century
('84)
, reissued on vinyl by Universal.
I
t didn't sound all that hi-fi
back in '78, that first Cold
Chisel record. It still doesn't,
and it still doesn’t matter. The
gist was always more a sinewy,
shimmering promise than the full
stadium-detonating charge.
Some enigmatic Asian romance
wraps around the cover. "Jet-
lag" is the first word on a lyric
sheet laid out in big type, like
words are important, inside the
gatefold. Juliet, Sandy, Rosaline,
Daskarzine and the rest are all
past tense
–
legs often open,
minds always closed, lit beneath
café fans and Roman steeples by
some bruised narrator feverish
from long-haul travel.
The words are Don Walker's,
the voice is mostly Jim Barnes,
with Ian Moss a dream second
stringer. They blend into one
restless, world-weary seeker,
always leaving or arriving to some
disappointment or other, dragging
seedy blues and jazz twists in
all their unsettled colours into a
distinctly Australian panorama
previously foreign to rock'n'roll.
It is one hell of start.
Breakfast At Sweethearts
didn't sound much better in '79.
Still doesn't matter. The landscape
is more localised around the
bars and foyers and dingy hotel
rooms of King's Cross, with the
call of the road nagging through
gnashing teeth and Astrid and
other nameless vixens selling
all kinds of trouble behind stage
curtains and locked doors.
Which one is that, staring
like a waxwork from the back
cover? The writing hangs over
her head: "This is the neon
strip/ Where baracudas (sic)
cruise/ Drivers, midnight looters/
Zipped in sharkskin jackets…"
She looks like she can handle
herself. Sweethearts is strictly a
forwarding address.
East
? Well, that’s one great-
sounding record. The fateful
'commercial' turning point of 1980
that Walker would resent all too
soon, spewing radio songs like a
choirgirl on cheap wine. His cast
of outsider characters has a more
overtly violent and/or criminal
streak: all sawn-off-shotguns and
pub riots and penitentiary walls.
Barnes, Moss, drummer Steve
Prestwich and even bassist Phil
Small are snapping at his heels as
writers now, each going for the
Countdown
gold ring. There's a
bonus seven-inch 45 of
Knocking
On Heaven's Door,
between
Mossy's 4am moan through
The
Party's Over
.
Circus Animals
is what they were
by '82. Slaves to the grind and
plenty mean about it. It opens
with Barnes's furniture-upsetting
kiss-off to the US label stiffs,
then Mossy's slow-burning rattle
and burn back out to
Bow River
.
Prestwich hits his straps with a
couple of classics FM radio will
play forever now. Walker's ornery
menagerie
–
Taipan
,
Houndog
,
Wild Colonial Boy
–
lurks in the
back of the tent.
The wheels were falling off by
Twentieth Century
. Tempers had
frayed and Prestwich split after
the matchless
Flame Trees
and
Barnes's fed-up dressing room
tantrum,
No Sense
. Mossy feels
Walker's Saturday night ennui like
a brother, and sings the whole
band of wasted travellers back
home to
Janelle
.
OK, maybe there's some filler on
this one, between 13 songs and
a big fold-out poster
–
hey, is that
Donald Trump being pleasured
by a minion's wife on the cover?
But you'd be hard pressed to find
it anywhere else in these five
albums. Ragged tyres and blown
fuses and all, it's a string of
hard-bitten road movies with just
about every scene essential to
the big story. It's a trip well worth
retracing one side at a time.
(Universal)
Cold Chisel
1978
Breakfast At
Sweethearts
1979
East
1980
Circus
Animals
1982
Twentieth
Century
1984