Chasing Ghosts' Jimmy Kyle on new album Therapy, reconciliation and tackling tough topics

Australia Broadcast Center

5 days ago

Content Warning: This article discusses suicide and domestic violence.
The weight of an album's subject matter isn't always a good measure of its quality. But in the case of Chasing Ghosts and Therapy, one of the year's best albums, there's absolutely a positive correlation.
Therapy lives up to its title, confronting topics even heavier than the down-tuned riffs and pummelling energy that define its hard rock sound.
Mental health, domestic violence, suicide, intergenerational trauma — each song wrestles with difficult issues in catchy, cathartic anthems just as likely to make you tear up and reflect as they will have you shouting along.
Witness the muscular IWPTEK (an acronym for 'I Wouldn't Profess To Even Know'), all cutting riffs and blood-pumping tempo as Jimmy Kyle, the group's proud Thungutti frontman, raises his voice to a throat-shredding roar of solidarity for trans family members:
"I don't have to understand all the elements of someone's lived experience to understand what respect is," the musician tells Double J's Dylan Lewis.
"My job isn't to figure out what your gender identity is, or your orientation … nor is it my business. My job is to love you while you figure it out. And that's it. That's what that song is about."
That earnest, conversational tone filters into the chorus of Flowers: "Don't you lie to me/And tell me that you're okay, when you're not."
It's a song about "dealing with the 'what could I have done?' The 'what ifs' when you lose someone to suicide," Kyle explains.
It's even more poignant knowing Flowers is dedicated to his late friend Sean "SK" Kennedy, former bassist for fellow homegrown heavy acts I Killed The Prom Queen and Deez Nuts, who took his own life in 2021.
Similarly, the power ballad Hurting Years is an ode to those that "didn't make it" and the resilience of those that did, the lyrics underscoring the fine line that can separate the two.
"I implore you to tell your friends that you love them," Kyle sings, addressing the alarming rates of suicide among young Australians. "For First Nations communities, it's even higher still," he adds.
Another national epidemic — domestic violence — is tackled in My Bingayi (translating to "My elder brother"), which zeros in on a heart-rending appeal to an individual perpetrator to end the cycles of abuse. The outcome manages to nail the tricky balance between being melodic and tender yet heavy hitting in tone.
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"It's a cautionary thing about recognising the potential of a person and not condemning them just purely as a monster. And that's a very nuanced conversation. And it's a dangerous conversation to stumble through recklessly," says the frontman.
"But I'm hoping that some young man might see himself in a song like My Bingayi and think, 'There's a better version of me out there I can lean into. And this is not it.'"
Chasing Ghosts began as a solo project of Kyle's more than a decade ago. From the raw, acoustic missives of 2011 debut Confessions From A Phone Booth, it has evolved into the five-piece band powering Therapy.
It's easily the biggest and most polished Chasing Ghosts have ever sounded, courtesy of ARIA Award-nominated producer Stevie Knight, who brings extra punch and gloss to the mix.
Hooky melodies and crunching, bellowing choruses are framed by strings, synths, and piano. Rather than merely prettying up these songs, these flourishes amplify their emotional intensity.
Even as his songwriting has expanded dramatically in sound and scope over the years, the through-line has always been Kyle's passionate lyricism and authoritative honesty, particularly concerning the ongoing inequity and challenges First Nations people face.
Therapy so often hits where it matters because Kyle isn't a rock star preaching platitudes from a soapbox. Instead, he comes across as a relatable guy; a working-class father just trying to pay the bills and get some darn sleep, whether through natural remedies (on Chamomile Tea) or prescriptive means (on the booming Ten Feet Tall).
For all the weight Kyle shoulders, and the difficulties Therapy wrestles with, the music is more life-affirming than harrowing. It isn't raging against the machine, more rallying together to confront uncomfortable truths.
He wanted these songs to engage in difficult conversations, "but I also didn't want to browbeat people. I think that's when we talk about why these songs are difficult to write. It's about shaving off the rough edges around difficult conversations. Being really mindful when you write a song about domestic violence [for example]".
Fist-pumping single Amnesia Everybody addresses what Kyle calls a "head in the sand" attitude towards Australia's violent colonial history.
"The short version of that is things like slavery, the massacres that occurred in this country and a lot of people probably aren't familiar with the fact that 50 per cent of those massacres were led by colonial police officers. That really set the dynamic for policing in Australia and especially for First Nations communities.
"We have big gaps in our education system … that give people a very skewed understanding of how some huge historical events, which don't' seem to feature in any of our textbooks, have direct links to the circumstances and the context and the relationship and the dynamic we're in today between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians.
"Many of us are pretty disenfranchised with the reconciliation movement, we feel a bit let down and disappointed, especially with recent events. People getting booed for acknowledging the historical truth and reality.
"Myths are often what fills the place of facts in Australian history. And I think if we can get rid of the myth, if our communities can come together and stand with our allies, we can build momentum again to do something positive."
The album ends on an optimistic note that rings sincere because it's hard-won, Kyle singing of "trying to be better each day" on closing track Trick or Treaty. Somebody striving to build upon the work of those who've gone before to leave the world in a better place for those that come after.
"The most important thing for me — I have a son now, so I think about that — is treaty. We want a treaty between First Nations and non-Indigenous peoples in this country."
He estimates the majority of "the Aboriginal community would agree with that" and see the potential of a unified Australia.
"Where we have an intimate awareness of one another and we try and meet each other's needs to do positive things for the future generations," he elaborates.
"Because my son's going to have to grow up in this country. I don't want him to face racism endlessly.
His sentiments resonate with the current NAIDOC Week theme of "next generation: strength, vision and legacy". However, Kyle acknowledges there's a lot more work to be done, and a long history of mistreatment and mistrust to overcome, pointing towards landmark protests like the 1965 Freedom Ride and 1972 Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
"Our communities, we challenge and we agitate to make change and that's why we do it. If we hadn't agitated, then change doesn't come. It's never been handed to us … And that's the truth.
"I don't want people to misconstrue, when we criticise systemic racism and historical injustices. We want justice. That's a normal thing to want in a democratic society. So, it's not a personal punch down on non-Indigenous people, by any means. It's we want true reconciliation where we understand each other."
He believes reconciliation and treaty are still within reach, with a shift in perspective and a healthy amount of respect and empathy necessary for living together.
"Because no-one's going anywhere. There's 28 million of us all stuck on this big old island. We all gotta get along at some point, and the one thing I know is: respect is free. So, when someone disrespects Aboriginal people, it doesn't say anything about us. It says everything about them.
"I believe the criticism sometimes that we bring to the table, people hear negatively, but I think if people could consider that we see the potential of an Australia of us all together, working together.
"We're not asking non-Indigenous people to forget their British heritage or their Irish heritage or whatever their heritage is. We're not asking them to not be seen in public and to quieten down, so don't ask us to. We're not going to get quieter, I can guarantee that part."
Speaking up and standing firm, rather than suffering through struggles in silence, is a unifying theme of Chasing Ghosts's new album. And the clue is right there in the title.
Rather than being confrontational, Therapy's song-craft aims to be inclusive, offering catharsis and healing
"Music is therapeutic by nature. It's not just my sort of cathartic release of things that sat on me," says Kyle.
"So, whether or not it's my therapy, or whether it's your therapy, or whether we all go to therapy together — it's consistent in the idea of expressing things that make us a little bit scared."
Therapy is out now.