The first thing struck me, from the first couple of notes is that it's a stridently Australian album. There's no way you'd pick it as coming from anywhere else. As things continued along the track on subsequent releases Schumann's nasal Strine accent moderated, but there's no way that you're going to place these vocals on any other continent or plonk them down in the middle of any of the intercontinental oceans for that matter.
I'm no expert on Adelaide night life, and while the elements identified in the opening One More Thursday Night In Adelaide may or may not still be there, regardless of whether there’s still no one on the streets there’s definitely still nothing on TV/So I think I’ll go and burn my T.V. guide. We may have reached the wonderful new age of high definition and pay T.V. but there are now, to paraphrase Mr Springsteen, somewhere around fifty-seven channels with nothing much on...
Regardless of that point, hangin’ out at discos, orange laminex pizza bars and arty farty cities more than likely continue to bring you down.
If that opener isn’t pointed enough when you’re talking contemporary issues the second track, Carrington Cabaret presents a depressingly familiar view of life as it’s imposed on sections of our indigenous community. Thirty years, millions of dollars, assorted policy initiatives from State and Federal governments, Royal Commissions, Parliamentary Inquiries and the odd intervention here and there and not much has changed.
If there hasn’t been a whole lot of change in the situation as far as the indigenous population’s concerned, in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis we’ve still got a bastard called the economy that’s been wrapped ... up in bandages/To hide his gaping sores. Those lines from Track Three Critique In C.
Stimulus package, anyone?
The more, as they say, things change...