Cold Chisel’s ninth album ‘Blood Moon’: all killer, no filler

Cold Chisel’s ninth studio album is all about reliving past glories, but it also finds the widely loved rock quintet match-fit and ready to deliver.

Cold Chisel. Picture: Daniel Boud.

Rock

Blood Moon

Cold Chisel

Universal

★★★★

Blood Moon, by Cold Chisel.

Getting the Band Back Together, the first single from Cold Chisel’s ninth studio album, is all about reliving past glories. Its tongue-in-cheek amiability speaks as much to the wannabes and could-have-beens as it does to Chisel themselves, now effectively a supergroup that reconvenes every few years to toss off another album and tour. But that would give the lie to the reality for its five members, most of whom are busy with outside projects. It’s why when they come together for those sporadic sessions, they’re all match-fit and ready to deliver. Blood Moon, aptly named for the periodic lunar eclipse phenomenon, is a prime example: 10 tracks, all killer, no filler, unless you count guitarist Ian Moss’s soul-by-numbers closer, You Are So Beautiful. Four are co-writes by pianist Don Walker and singer Jimmy Barnes; one, Buried Treasure, marks the assured songwriting debut of drummer Charley Drayton; Walker assists on that track too, but the rest of the songs are his alone. The keynote throughout is consistency: Moss’s blazing, inventive solos, Phil Small’s melodic, muscular bass, Walker’s bedrock keys and Drayton’s solid yet supple drumming. Barnes’s vocal exchanges with Moss are a feature, as are his lyrics: Drive bookends Stolen Car, a track from Barnes’s 2019 solo album, also co-written with Walker; the bitterly resigned Killing Time is Blood Moon’s big ballad, while Someday ripples with terse two-liners: “Someday I’ll learn to bite my lip / Someday I’ll let you speak”. Walker’s Accident Prone is archetypal Chisel, its lyrics assessing the damage of a life lived hard (now, whose might that be?), while its companion song, I Hit the Wall, sounds a similar cautionary note. From its debut self-titled album 41 years ago, Chisel has always flirted with jazz and the blue note — see One Long Day — and Blood Moon’s moment is Boundary Street. It’s Walker’s paean to the avenue of the same name in Sydney’s Darlinghurst, though its smoky, slinky ambience could just as easily have placed it in Bourbon Street, New Orleans. Such is the scope of a band that’s been around for the best part of half a century — give or take the odd hiatus.

Phil Stafford

Flow by Bobby Alu

Tropical folk

Flow

Bobby Alu

Independent

★★★★

I didn’t know I needed a soundtrack for chilling in a hammock, but since hearing Flow, I’ve decided it’s a must-have for every household. Sweeping us away on a tropical ocean breeze, Bobby Alu weaves his Polynesian influence around smooth pop and island vibes, creating an album that feels at home on a summer’s day. Ukulele is not a dirty word in Alu’s hands, with acoustic riffs drifting across lively drum beats and sweet harmonies, so that you can almost feel the sand between your toes. Flow isn’t all sweetness and light — there’s a depth to songs like Days Behind, which encapsulates the feeling of not being great at life, and Tomorrow hits on that sense of exhaustion that comes after being totally slammed at work — in Alu’s case, while touring across the 20 countries in which he wrote this third album. It’s a perfect summer soundtrack: upbeat and uplifting, with a good dose of tropical-tinged reality.

Sarah Howells

Australian Halloween by Youth Group

Indie Pop/Rock

Australian Halloween

Youth Group

Ivy League

★★★★

While best known overseas for a 2006 cover of Alphaville’s Forever Young, Youth Group had been cutting clear-eyed indie rock for a solid decade before then. Another whole decade separates the Sydney quartet’s new album from its predecessor, and frontman Toby Martin sounds all the more mellow and mature for the interval. If there’s nothing particularly new about Australian Halloween, these 10 songs occupy a streamlined, efficient corner of power-pop heaven, with subtle lyrics a cut above most. Cusp provides a knockout introduction, evoking the graceful ageing of American analog Nada Surf, while the coming-of-age remembrance Ol Glenferrie gives the album its wistful title. When Martin sings “I thought we’d survive this / I guess I was wrong” on Erskineville Nights, it’s cause to rejoice that Youth Group actually has survived — and in fine form.

Doug Wallen

Wild by Tourist

Electronic

Wild

Tourist

Monday Records

★★★

On Wild, the third album by William Phillips — aka Tourist — the British artist has honed his composing, writing, production and remixing skills via collaborations with Christine & The Queens, Chvrches, Hozier and Wolf Alice. Here, he creates eclectic soundscapes rich with the fuzz of vinyl records, glitchy sampled noises and voices that echo in from interplanetary satellites. Bunny takes a dance beat and builds a lush world around it gradually over three minutes. This track epitomises what Tourist excels at across the entire album: taking samples, adding a beat and layering carefully to hit just the right emotional pitch before fading everything out just as you become enveloped. By using synth keyboards, hallowed voices, the digital bubble and pop of mechanical gears and the spaciousness of sky and ozone, Tourist guides listeners through all the feels. Bound to show up on TV drama closing credits sometime soon.

Cat Woods

Richard Tognetti and Erin Helyard's Violin Sonatas

Classical

Violin Sonatas

Richard Tognetti and Erin Helyard

ABC Classics

★★★★½

This generous double album creates a bridge between the elegant classical world of Mozart and the more tempestuous, early Romantic world of Beethoven. In between are two short gems by composers associated with Mozart. Overall, this is an impressive package, meticulously researched and essayed, and delivered with flair and panache by two consummate Australian performers playing on period instruments. There is a sense of a cheeky, almost coquettish conversation between the pair, sharing delights and intimacies as they explore the evolution of the sonata form. The assertiveness and clarity of their argument is compelling. While the music of early Mozart and his admirers is charming and elegant, Beethoven’s mighty Kreutzer Sonata is downright thrilling. Recorded in March last year in the ABC’s Goossens Hall, these recordings are a triumph.

Vincent Plush

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PLAYLIST

Holly Throsby, singer, songwriter, author

Five songs on high rotation

01. Lux Prima Karen O & Danger Mouse

I love this whole record, and this first track is very rich in sound: I love its slow build, and very much when the drums come in.

02. Treasure Aldous Harding

Perhaps my favourite song on this record of very fine songs.

03. Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping Grouper

An old song, but one that I find very moving and which takes me to a certain dream place.

04. Let It Go Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile

A great song from a great album, featuring two great songwriters who have a very light and loose touch with things.

05. Big Art Museum June Jones

June opened for Seeker Lover Keeper on our recent tour and I love her songs so much. Gorgeous melodies and she is a very clever lyricist — wry and funny, and then heartbreaking.