BMA Magazine

Wednesday, 25 August 2010 00:00

This is the third release from an outfit originally known as Henry F. Skerritt and the Holy Sea. In 2007 they decided to forgo personal fame and pander to those who can’t remember long band titles, and retitled the group with their current name. With a lot of today’s FM fodder being pretty strong on the beats but rather low rent on the lyrics, it’s great to bask in this shining example of Aussie songwriting talent.

Folk rockers The Holy Sea provide a distinctly Antipodean flavour to this fine collection, with themes gouged out from the savage history of this wide brown land. The colours in the album, with its frenzied, evocative rhythms, are fed by Henry’s passion for Australian art history, which is inescapably linked with the story of the nation. Skerritt’s forceful vocals are commanding, whether he’s howling out The King of Palm Island or roaring along to There Be Dragons Here, about the thrill and danger of exploring the seas in search of the great southern land. Album highlights are The Ten Rules, about the big dividing lines in life, and The Seafarer, in which the balmy vocals from Emma Frichot are contrasted by the eloquent agony of tortured strings from Gareth Skinner’s cello. The best word picture appears in Bad Luck with “The body of my lover stretches out just like the hills of Adelaide”. (Obviously not a curvy lass, as anyone who has seen the hills from the city would know).