From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The front I'm Claire Harvey. In this week's episode, we take a deep dive into The Cruel Sea. Music writer Andrew McMillan sits down.
For a sandwich.
With frontman Text Perkins.
You don't want me to be angry, and then.
I chat with Andrew and get his thoughts on the band's new album. There's something refreshing about a candid rock star, and they don't come much more candid than The Cruel Sea's frontman Text Perkins, sitting down with a review before the last show of a recent tour opening up for Aussie rock icon's Cold Chisel, Text said, let's just do.
Our g do well and get the fuck out of the way.
When he was asked about the band's approach.
To the tour, nobody's truly there to see us, but I figured if we can win ten percent of these fifteen thousand people will fill all the venues that we plan to play on our album tour.
From John Lennon to Johnny Rotten, rock stars are irreverent. It's part of the gig. But when asked about the experience of touring with Cold Chisel, Tex Perkins came over all sincere.
There's a lot of love in the crew and the bands and in the audience, and it's impossible not to get a little emotional and a little bit teary when you see that many people united in their joy and love and what that band means to people.
They are truly Australia's band.
If Cold Chisel is a Australia's band, maybe the Cruel Sea is Chisel's younger brother, a bit quieter, a bit more mysterious. The band started off as an instrumental group in the eighties.
While texts I was in bands like Thug and Toilet Duck, but it was all just you know, making stupid noises and screaming and experimenting backwards vocals, just all just avant guard silliness.
It was Texas collaborator in Thug, Peter Reid, whom text describes as a sound genius who introduced him to the band that would change his life and the sound of Australian rock.
Yeah.
I visited him one afternoon and he said I've got to go. I've got to go and mix a band at the Hall Park Hotel.
And I said, oh, come with you, and he.
Said, na, na, you wouldn't like it, but I came along anyway, and yes, he was doing this sound and there was an empty four channel lighting board with on off and maybe a couple of faders.
And that's how.
I became the band's lighting tech nition.
Text would eventually graduate from lighting tech to front man.
You can only be satisfied with making fart noises as a career for so long.
But when it comes to the songwriting process, the cruel Sy still functions as an instrumental band plus one led by guitarist Danny Rumer.
Danny's very generous.
I can change any instrumental that are envisage, you know, I think this could become a song.
It's already giving me some.
Kind of emotional guidance of what the lyrics could be. Or sometimes I just hear them and go, well, that's great as it is. I love instrumental music myself. That's what attracted me to the band in the first place. Hip hop can do without the rapping as far as sumptins.
The instrumental four. So that's a very early song.
It's on the second album, but I think that was one of the first tracks that we started to get played on the radio. To tell you the truth, I think I'd probably put off just as many people as I attract. I was listening to a tune which I by then was quite familiar with. It's an instrumental that the cruel Sy had called King Tide, and it had this wonderful guitar or if they went down, down down, and then my subconsciousness kept in that sounds like down really low down below in you and down below.
My entry into the cruel Sy.
I wanted to be as instrumental as possible. I mean literally, just making words out of what the guitar sounds like it's already saying was my approach, and I think that was the polite thing to do.
Coming up what keeps these old guys rocking? Andrew McMillan is the Australian's music writer. Andrew, you were with Tex Perkins before their last Cold chise All show.
It's funny to think of what The cruel Sy might have become if they had never invited Texts to join them on vocals. My suspicions they would have remained a small pub gig kind of band, playing to small audiences around Sydney and maybe Interstate, but when Text joins, they got his charisma and his songwriting smarts and his ability to connect with audiences. They regrouped in late twenty twenty
three after a long time between gigs. One of their most loved members, James Crookshank, had died in twenty fifteen from bowel cancer, so they hadn't played any gigs between then and twenty twenty three until their record label approached them and said, Hey, the thirtieth anniversary of your biggest record is coming up. We're going to reissue it on vinyl, or actually issue it on vinyl for the first time. Would you consider getting together to do some shows in
support of that, and they decided to do that. They asked a new guitarist to join the fold, a guy named Matt Walker, and it was a really well received tour. They saw that theaters around the country, and I think shortly thereafter, the Cruel Sy became a viable option for col Chisel to ask them to be national support for
colch Chissel's fiftieth anniversary tour. So they weren't headlining, but they were a very well known support band to many of colch Chistl's listeners already and it was a pretty good opportunity to get in front of about two hundred and twenty five thousand people across twenty three shows nationally.
How did you see the fans of the crowds receiving the cruel sea? What was the vibe like?
They were just in fantastic form. They had the runs on the board, not just the decades of history, but the weeks of following Col Chissel around the country and playing to big crowds where they can walk on stage without a sound check even and deliver, which is what they've been doing to audiences small and large for thirty seven years.
By that point, it seems like it might be a young man's game rock and roll. But are they proving that you don't have to be twenty two to rock?
That's part of it for sure. I think tex Perkins just turned sixty recently within the last few months. But the rigors of touring, they become demanding on the body as it ages naturally, like even touring on buses, vans, planes, It all takes us toll on the body, let alone the late nights early mornings. Add in potential drug and alcohol use. Maybe not so much now, but earlier in these guys' careers for sure, which they've all spoken about previously.
It's a demanding job, but I think having lost their friend and bandmate James Crookshank to bowel cancer, and I think more than ever, all of them appreciate how lucky they are to continue doing this thing they love called playing music to their many fans around the country. And I think the new album is a fine statement of not just their intent and their ability as artists, but
almost like a survivor's statement. We're still here, We've still got the chemistry, charisma and ability, and here's our best attempt at offering up something that can match it with the best of our catalog. And I think it does.
Down to the last few bites of that fish sandwich. Reflecting on almost forty years together with the band, tex Perkins cast his mind back to that day when his mate Peter Reid suggested he not come along to see the band in nineteen eighty seven.
It's a total sliding doors moment.
If I'd have gone, okay, I'll go ahead, and then I might have joined it completely different. Maybe life would have been much better had I not gone to the Harrol Pag Hotels.
Andrew McMillan is the Australian's music writer and you've been listening to music by the Cruel Sea throughout this episode. This is the title track to their album called Straight Into the Sun, which comes out on March seven. Thanks for joining us on the front. Our team is Kristin Amiot, Leat, Samaglue, Tiffany Dimak, Joshua Burton, Stephanie Coombs, Jasper Leek, who produced and edited this episode, and me Claire Harvey.
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