In The Manifesto - Sacred Cowboys (Torn &Frayed/Beast Records)
It’s cause for a celebration whenever Sacred Cowboys release a new album. Principal member Garry Gray holds his freak flag high in a fight against mediocrity in music, and he’s now reunited with a fellow founding member in Mark Ferrie.
I have long argued that the Celibate Rifles captured the frantic and wild, surf-meets-Detroit Sydney Sound with their own laconic touch. Sacred Cowboys are a shining light of what the best of the Melbourne Sound. They play rootsy bar room blues, swampy while embracing post punk's excursions and maintaining a sense of punk's urgency.
Over the years, Sacred Cowboys have featured some of their home city’s most legendary players. The constant Cowboy is, of course, Garry. He’s Melbourne's version of a wild Southern evangelical preacher, waving his hands and alternately hollering or crooning as he takes us on dark lyrical journeys
Waves of rock 'n' roll have always been driven by teenagers coming to the same conclusions. After the excitment of country blues and garage rock (the latter inspired by the British invasion), popular music was meandering by 1974. It was mired in post-hippie drivel and prog rock. Youth rebellion was gone - with a few notable exceptions. The Stooges and MC5 had been both rejected and broken. In garages across the globe, however, there were bunches of teenagers blazing new trails.
In Queens in New York City, it was The Ramones. In Australia, it was the Saints. Their claim to fame was backed by a lo-fi cassette recording that showed – posthumously - that they were indeed The Most Primitive Band in The World. At the same time, Radio Birdman started playing around Sydney, taking their cues from all sorts of places and spitting songs out with unrestrained hostility.
A lesser-known story concerns another bunch of kids in the working class, fibro suburbs of Melbourne. One was Garry Gray. As did Ed Kuepper, he’d ordered a copy of “Raw Power” from the World Record Club mail order house. There were probably less than 100 like-minded kids across Australia who'd done the same thing, and even fewer of them were in bands
Inspired by the Stooges, mid-‘60s Stones, the first Kinks album and of course the Alice Cooper band, Garry had a group called Judas Iscariot and The Traitors. They left no recorded mark and were never going to appear on TV’s “Countdown”. Garry and his circle of friends traded copies of Creem magazine and cassettes. Two of his peers were fellow teenagers Nick Cave and Tracey Pew. They all went like disciples to see the first Melbourne tours by Radio Birdman and The Saints.
Internationally, the seeds had already been sown and by the late ‘70s, somethiing that came to be known as Punk exploded. At age 20, Garry was already a seminal champion of this street-level music, playing inner-Melbourne haunts with his band, The Negatives. They had broken up before the end of the decade. The Sacred Cowboys formed at the beginning of 1982, and within months were tearing Melbourne apart.
By then, music had again lost its danger, giving way to haircuts and synthesizers. It was the domain of fashion designers and the upper middle class. The Cowboys stood apart from all that, tuned into the same wavelength as bands USA bands like The Gun Club and the Cramps. Sacred Cowboys similarly took things back to the time when music was edgy. They were all darkness and ghosts, echoing raw hillbilly sounds and Delta blues. No wonder Molly Meldrum hated them.
Over the years since, the band has sporadically disappeared and re-emerged, each time with various line-ups. It was the middle of last year that the newest with Garry Gray and Mark Ferrie surfaced with some killer shows. Then then recorded this album.
A new Sacred Cowboys album is an always a must listen. "In The Manifesto" is the latest in a line of pioneering music. It’s intelligent; dark and street level.
It opens with “Said A Spirit”. The song starts with a jagged guitar riff as Garry bursts in to spray out his lyrics against a wall of solid chords. There’s some awesome guitar interplay that comes in waves as the song builds.
“Kool Aid On The Rocks” is a Ferrie/Gray composition. Once again, the guitars are a stand-out. The band locks into a solid groove with Garry’s insightful lyrical observations coming thick and fast.
Somewhere else one dies
Andalusian dog’s howl
Clouds scrape the sky
How they did cut the eye?
They’re itching to kill all over the land
"Pieces of Eight" is a rolling hayride moving along on the back of some awesome counter-melodies. It's a ballad that's softer and introspective than much of the album. On the othe rhand, "Matador" hits like a hammer with its discordance and sonic thunder. Gray hollers with intensity as the chords hammer down and the song erupts with all the brutality of a cyclone.
Side one finishes with "Spirt". It's gentler in pace and deeply reflective of Garry Gray's previous album with Edward Clayton Jones, the evocative "We Are Mainline Dreamers". When it does shift pace, it evolves in response to its lyrics with soaking reverb. The vocal fades and a startling, dub-like bass-line from Anthony Paine creates fresh layers of atmosphere. There's an echo of The Clash's "Armagideon Time".
Side Two opens with "Ambient Brain", a song that could have been an undiscovered Rolling Stones song from 1968. It's all swagger and swing with lashings of melody; the backing harmonies ooze a swinging '60s nightclub vibe. The rhythm guitar here is pure Keith Richards behind Gray's commanding vocal delivery.
"Cosmic Circus" follows and explodes with a dramatic change of pace. It has a punch-in-the-face impact and its attack as vicious as The Birthday Party "Dream Catcher In The Rye" switches the mood to tender, latter-day Dylan. It's a ballad that could have been on "Time Out Of Mind". Its elegant guitar lines and Garry’s weathered and tender, even fragile, vocal sit so well. Gray whispers and croons and his words are delivered perfectly.
A human bomb, a strand of DNA
You’re sewn inside a Voodoo chant
Mouths stitched up, a mind emptied of
Accessories to pain, the people in this world
"The Psychedelic Shooter Guitars" contains a lot of the early Cowboys sound but crossed with a Spaghetti western. The Sacred Ccowboys get taken down in a blaze of bullets. And "Zero Gravity" closes the album with a dark post-punk intensity and a vision of elemental fear.
"In The Manifesto" is a stunning album that draws from so many influences. Each song is well crafted and carefully arranged without losing any freshness. It weaves its way from straight rock and roll to late-'60s Rolling Stones swagger, into post punk and finding itself in darkened corners. It probes psychological dangers and makes succinct observations.
At heart of it is Garry Gray's stunning vocal delivery, and the way leads us on a lyrical trip encapsutlates his 50 years of making music. His long-term comrade Mark Ferrie delivers twin-guitar goodness with Timothy Deane, and the inventive but solid bass playing of Anthony Paine locks in with drummer Damian FitzGerald, who plays with so much light and shade.
It's out any day now on Torn & Frayed in Australia and Beast Records in France.
P.S. A few weeks ago, I reviewed the equally strong, guitar-driven, raw and powerful new album "THUNK" by Jim Mogine and The Family Dog. That album and this one are by veterans who are enomously influential musicians in their respective home cities. Their records capture the sounds of their respective places of origin perfectly. Get them both.
