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The Guardian
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Cruel Sea: Straight Into the Sun review – could it be any more Australian?
Every summer – because there is no season that says Australia more than summer – newspapers, television and radio stations run segments asking us for the most-Australian sounds, the most-Australian songs, the most-Australian artists. It is the usual 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. And yet, there may be no band more Australian-sounding than them. They are somewhere between the ultimate surf band and the perfect Sunday afternoon beer garden band, with Tex Perkins' vocals sounding either, or sometimes simultaneously, laconic and lethal. Having reunited for the 20th anniversary of The Honeymoon is Over in 2013, then again last year – seven years after the death of foundational guitarist James Cruickshanks – the Cruel Sea have now had as many returns as Nellie Melba. This time they've come back with their first new album in more than 20 years. 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 the Cruel Sea have never been either – but rather 'I'll choose what to give a fuck about'. 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 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 drummer Jim Elliott and bassist Ken Gormly (irreplaceable) steps only into a corner of that space. Perkins sings of shame and blame; 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. 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', but 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 principle remains. Or might even be enhanced, especially in Storm Bird. This track has the languid air of a body floating in still water, the drums played low and movement almost nonexistent, 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. The Cruel Sea emerged from different strands of Sydney's post-punk underground, while comfortably leaning into a very pre-punk style and sound – one that flourished in Melbourne but looked beyond the cities. 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, a 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', and a state of mind like the moon that 'does a good job disguising that it's lonely and cold'. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Heat and bonhomie never quite banish 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? Straight Into The Sun is out now (Universal)
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The return of the Cruel Sea: ‘I'm not going to play the same old shit – much as I love it'
Tex Perkins has been around the ruthlessly ageist Australian music industry to know an opportunity when he sees it. 'As far as Boomers and generation X punters go, it's all about anniversaries these days,' he says with a dry chuckle, somewhere on top of a hill (the mobile reception is better) near his home in northern New South Wales. But when it came to reforming the Cruel Sea to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the band's double-platinum selling, multiple Aria award-winning third album, The Honeymoon is Over, in 2023, there were major obstacles to overcome. The biggest: tracking down guitarist and leader Dan Rumour, whose very name positioned him somewhere between man and myth. Rumour was one of the great lost talents of Australian music. For nearly 15 years, he lived miles off the grid, on his father's property in rural NSW. Perkins hadn't spoken to him since The Honeymoon is Over's previous anniversary reunion (20th) in 2013; he didn't even have his phone number. By Rumour's admission, he didn't often have a phone that worked back then anyway. Eventually, Perkins says, drummer Jim Elliott came up with an old number. Perkins got through. What happened next is contested. Perkins describes Rumour's response to the proposal of a tour as an adamant, 'Fuck yeah, let's do it!' Rumour disputes this – 'Not at all,' is his flat response – but regardless of whose memory is correct, an old flame was lit. The Cruel Sea had not made an album since 2001's Where There's Smoke. They had also lost a key member: guitarist and keyboard player James Cruickshank succumbed to bowel cancer in 2015. But after talking to bass player Ken Gormly, Rumour says, 'I knew I had to record all the demos I had – that it was on, and I'd better be ready. So I got ready, real quick.' When Perkins walked into the room for the band's first Honeymoon rehearsal (with Cruickshank's shoes filled by old friend and fellow traveller Matt Walker), Rumour handed him a CD. 'Danny said, 'Here's some tunes, Tex, I hope you like them, maybe you can write some words.' I thought, fuckin' take it easy – let's see if we can remember the old ones first!' The result is Straight Into the Sun. Self-produced and financed, it most closely recalls the band's debut, 1989's Down Below, in its relaxed, surf-side feel. There is not an ounce of fat on it, no expectations and no pressure. 'We had 10 songs, and that was enough to go ahead. It wasn't born out of any desire to re-enter the marketplace,' Perkins says. To understand how the Cruel Sea got here, you have to know where they came from, and the long shadow that followed. Rumour formed the group in 1987 with Gormly and Elliott as an instrumental trio. The first three albums – containing most of the band's best-known material – are all based on music written by Rumour before Perkins joined two years later. It seems obvious that the immense charisma of Perkins took them from support slots in inner-city venues to major headline status. But that was not so obvious in 1989. Perkins – then still in his early 20s – had been taking the piss in a series of ensembles with names like Bumhead Orchestra, Toilet Duck and Thug, who boasted a charming single called Fuck Your Dad. He returned to making more conventional (and much more aggressive) music with Beasts of Bourbon, whose second album, Sour Mash, was released the same year as Down Below. But the Cruel Sea's sound – an intoxicating gumbo of Cajun, swamp, surf and spaghetti western themes – proved commercially irresistible, and they quickly overtook the Beasts. Their sweet spot, though, was brief. Perkins posits that at the Cruel Sea's peak the band filled a gap between the old guard of Australian music (Crowded House, Midnight Oil, INXS) and the new (You Am I, Silverchair, Powderfinger). Their fourth album, Three Legged Dog, went to No 1 in Australia in 1995. America and Europe were beckoning. But the band was cooked. Cruickshank was seriously injured in a car accident and was battling a heroin addiction. He wasn't the only one. 'Everybody imploded, everybody was at a low ebb, and that was the end of that,' Gormly says. 'We turned our backs on America. We got to the boardroom and just said thanks – we're going home.' By the band's fifth album, the undercooked Over Easy (1998), they were no longer flavour of the month and, as post-punk relics, too old besides. They had also lost focus. Where There's Smoke did better, thanks to the success of the single Cocaine, but turning their back on the overseas market meant grinding themselves into the dirt via endless touring back home. Quietly, the band went their own ways. There were occasional reunions (in 2008, 2010 and 2013) but nothing more. And Rumour, who had his own addiction issues, vanished. 'Well, they were wild days, the 90s,' he says wryly. 'I can now afford to rent a place, thank God. I've got enough work to do that. But it wasn't always the case, mate.' All of this makes Straight Into the Sun mean more. If the Honeymoon anniversary tour was far from inevitable, a new album was beyond unlikely. But Rumour had his mojo working. 'I'm not going to go out and play the same old fucking shit – much as I love it – I wanted new shit! So, what can I do about that?' He slips into the third person: 'Go and do it, Dan, do that!' Perkins is grateful. 'Over the years that we haven't sort of played, I realised how unique Danny's thing was. I didn't necessarily need it to be in the Cruel Sea, but I knew I wanted to work with Danny again. It's Danny's band. It's his unique approach to music that the whole thing is based on.' Straight Into the Sun is out on 7 March (Universal Music)
