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 Everett True

The return of Everett True | 69. The Saints

The return of Everett True | 69. The Saints
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I know. You’re expecting ‘This Perfect Day’ or ‘Know Your Product’ or some similar incendiary blast from the 1970s.

You’re wrong. This is by way of acknowledging that perhaps I’ve been wrong for quite a while now, too. In Brisbane, there are two types of music fans. The ones who side with Chris Bailey. The ones who side with Ed Kuepper. (The two main components of the first incendiary line up. The ones that parted company after the third album in 1978, and have reunited but briefly since.) Now, I ain’t about to cross the floor. I’m a Kuepper man through and through. (Check the name of this website, doofus.) That remains. But… man.

Chris Bailey.

Couple of weeks ago, under the impression the new Saints album – King Of The Sun/King Of The Midnight Sun (one’s a messier take on the other) – was indeed a new Saints album, I was asked to review it for The Guardian (Australia). So I listened to it, several times over. Closely. I wasn’t expecting too much, frankly. No Kuepper, no comment. Yes, it’s a long time to hold a side. Whatever. Also, any singer whose song Bruce Springsteen covers on his latest album (as he did with a Bailey composition)… well, let’s just say. I weren’t impressed. But Bangs alive! What a great rollicking, swaggering album of storytelling and electric(ifying) guitars. What an audacious and searing lilt to the voice, but smooth as all those music journalist clichés involving finely matured whiskey would have it, only smoother. And what fucking GREAT songs! Blink, and I could almost imagine that Kuepper had been responsible for it (except that the voice is…uh…better; and the guitars not quite so). I am so not familiar with The Saints’ catalogue post-early 1980s, but what a champion reawakening. Anyhow, turns out that this new Saints album is only a new Saints album in Europe. In Australia, it’s been available for a couple of years. So. Halfway through writing a review, I binned it. Sigh. Music that I wouldn’t normally like, but man. You can taste all of what followed – from Nick Cave, The Triffids and The Drones and The Gin Club onwards – within these lines and the sweet, sweet brass. Just wonderful.

I am so way in love with Chris Bailey’s insouciant gaze right now. I am so going to have to go back and check the past. I am prepared to be continually disappointed just to find ONE gem the equal of the 11 here.

I want to link to every single song here. I do not want to separate them.

I haven’t felt this strongly about music like this since last time I properly listened to Kuepper. Now, I’m going to have to go back and listen to him too, restate my allegiance.

Damn. The song I really want to link to is the seven-minute windblown epic, ‘Turn’. But man, this one will do just fine. (Ignore the video. I have no idea what it’s doing there.)

Such a welcome surprise.

P.S. Springsteen’s voice cannot hope to hold a candle to this.

Here. Treat yourselves.

Related posts: an interview with Chris Bailey (The Saints), conducted for All Times Through Paradise.

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