It’s been 30 years since the release of The Cruel Sea
phenomenal, 5 x ARIA Award-winning / Triple Platinum album,
The Honeymoon Is Over.The Cruel Sea are set to reunite for a
national tour this November/December, featuring Tex Perkins
(Vox), Jim Elliot (Drums), Ken Gormley (Bass) and Dan Rumour
(Guitar), together with Matt Walker (Guitar/Keys) filling in
for the much-loved & missed, late James Cruickshank. Fans
can expect to hear plenty of favourites from The Honeymoon
Is Over, as well as a selection of songs across their entire
catalogue.
Credits
released August 16, 2021
Written and performed by Matt Walker in Melbourne. Australia
Mixed and mastered by Zlaya Loud in Barcelona. Spain
Artwork by Tim McCormack
Fringe review: Tex Perkins and Matt Walker
Tex Perkins is known for his Cruel Sea and Beasts of Bourbon
catalogue, but a stunning Adelaide Fringe performance with
ARIA-award-winning guitarist Matt Walker proves – once again – the
musician is not a one-trick pony. ★★★★★
Written by Angela Skujins
for INDAILY ADELAIDE independent news
(Click image
to enlarge)
Tex Perkins is the master of
maturation.
Since the ’80s, the Darwin-born but now Melbourne-based singer has
fronted bands such as The Cruel Sea, Beasts of Bourbon, Tex Deadly
and the Dum-Dums, plus a whole host of others, and has become known
for his gravelly baritone chops and crooning about love, getting
lost and the outback. If these projects weren’t enough, just over a
decade ago Perkins debuted his now perennial Man in Black show,
where he and a backing band perform devastatingly good Johnny Cash
covers such as “Ring of Fire“ and “Sunday Morning Coming Down“.
But on Sunday evening in The Garden of Unearthly Delights’
Spiegeltent, Adelaide Fringe audiences witnessed something old but
very new from the artist – a range of unreleased material written
with guitarist Matt Walker.
Alongside classics such as the chart-topping “This is Not the Way
Home”, which had the crowd thumping on the venue’s wooden
floorboards, and an homage to our “completely and morally bankrupt”
Prime Minister with the raucous “The Honeymoon is Over”, the
60-minute show proved Perkins could also explore uncharted territory
as an evolving artist with a set of unpublished songs.
Walker, an established blues musician who has toured with the likes
of Bob Dylan and Patti Smith, provided polished backing vocals as
well showing his skills on slide guitar.
“Here’s another track off our fabulous album that may never get
released,” Perkins told the crowd with a wink. Although the new
songs sound similar to Perkins’ earlier rock and blues records, with
a lot of reverb, vocal harmonies and acoustic guitar, lyrically they
go somewhere deeper.
The shiniest part of the oeuvre was the swansong of the evening,
where instead of singing about a girl, Perkins turned his attention
towards the person who brought him into the world: his mum.
“I would like to dedicate this song to all the mothers out there,”
he said, breaking from his upbeat persona. “I lost my own mum a
couple of weeks ago… I sang this song by her bedside.”
What followed was a moving performance that had this reviewer’s own
mother in tears, and proved Perkins is one of those musicians who
doesn’t exist in a time capsule. Even after his ’90s heyday of
performing at festivals alongside luminaries such as Nirvana, Iggy
Pop and Sonic Youth, he is still a relevant bonafide and brutal
artist.
Tex Perkins and Matt Walker performed at the Adelaide Fringe for one
night only.
FRINGE REVIEW: TEX PERKINS AND MATT
WALKER – THE SPIEGELTENT GARDEN OF UNEARTHLY DELIGHTS, 2021
Tex Perkins, as always, seems
indefatigable. His stage presence, perfectly crafted since bursting
onto the Sydney music since in the mid 1980s, fills the mirrored
Spiegeltent and mesmerises the sold-out crowd. Joined by the ARIA
Award-winning blues musician Matt Walker on acoustic guitar, Perkins
weaves his old-school rock and roll magic, his gravelly vocal
stylings delighting the audience with each track.
The set is a mix of new songs and old favourites, including tracks
spanning Perkins’ career and discography. To the joy of fans,
Perkins and Walker play a mix of hits—The Honeymoon is Over, clearly
a crowd favourite, delivered as artfully and with as much intensity
as its release in 1993, while the Beasts of Bourbon’s This is not
the Way Home takes the audience on a nostalgic journey, and Dark
Horses gets a nod with a spinetingling rendition of Please Break Me
Gently.
‘I don’t write songs about sex and drugs and rock and roll anymore,’
quips Perkins, ‘I write about mortgages and negative gearing and
franking credits.’ The acoustic and electric guitars wash over the
audience like a perfectly harmonious wave. Love Long Gone is
achingly beautiful, delivered with Perkins’ trademark growl, and
Woman With Soul stills the room—a dedication to Perkins’ mother,
Auriel, who recently passed away.
Oozing magnetism from every pore, rock royalty graced our shores for
one night only and put on quite a show. Perkins, Walker and their
guitars captivated the audience with their seamless performance and
brought the tent down. With any luck, they will be back next year.
A globally syndicated radio show,
featuring the best Americana music made solely by non-American
artists...
A special "down Under" episode.
Click
here to check it out!
Songs on the Wire
Anne McCue, acclaimed
Australian singer, songwriter, guitarist, multi-Instrumentalist,
music-recording producer, engineer, and video director
hosts this show on community radio in Nashville USA -
details
Lost Ragas' "I Am
Awakening" from the This is Not a Dream album popped up on
her December 15th show
Nuevamente discazo de los
australianos Lost Ragas que tras cuatro años sin saber nada de ellos
publican este año «This is not a Dream«. Tras su anterior «Trans
Atlantic Highway», los de Melbourne lanzan su tercer larga duración en
el que vuelven a difuminar esa música de raíces, Americana, psicodelia y
counrty en sus diez canciones.
El nuevo proyecto de una de las voces más importantes en Australia
dentro de la Americana music, hablamos de Matt Walker, artista que lleva
más de dos décadas y diez discos a sus espaldas, se acompaña en este
nuevo trabajo tal International Submarine Band como ya hiciera Gram
Parsons de Shane Reilly, Roger Bergodaz y Simon Burke de puro y duro
Country Cósmico. Es como escuchar a Beck y Sturgill Simpson junto con el
fantasma de Harry Nilsson.
La voz de Matt Walker y la música de Lost Ragas se esparcen en un
suspiro, y cada canción espera el amanecer, sin ningún aval de que esta
vez la oscuridad no vaya a ser permanente, tal vez el apocalipsis no sea
para tanto.
* Edited translation
Dirty Rock Magazine
Spain
Records
11 December, 2019
Lost Ragas have a new album, "This is not a Dream"
The Lost Ragas, from Melbourne Australian return after four years since
their previous "Trans Atlantic Highway", without my knowing anything
about them, to publish this year "This is not a Dream", their third
album in which they return to blur the music of roots, Americana,
psychedelia and country in their ten songs.
This is a new project of one of the most important voices in the
Australian Americana music scene. I talk about Matt Walker, an artist
who has more than two decades and ten albums behind him, who is
accompanied in this new work by Shane Reilly, Roger Bergodaz and Hayden
Meggit.
Like Gram Parson's International Submarine Band, Lost Ragas is pure and
hard Cosmic Country. It's like listening to Beck and Sturgill Simpson
along with the ghost of Harry Nilsson.
The voice of Matt Walker and the music of Lost Ragas are scattered in a
sigh, and each song awaits the dawn, without any guarantee that this
time the darkness will not be permanent. Perhaps the apocalypse is not
so bad.
by Carlos Pérez Báez
(Tenerife)
Post To Wire
Alt-country, folk, blues & rock'n'roll
Lost Ragas
This Is Not A Dream
Independent
★★★★½
On their their third album, Melbourne band Lost Ragas take their brand
of psychedelic country music further out into the cosmos, though its
title and various thematic references suggest the territory they're
exploring is our internal subconscious and its relationship with the
realities of the modern world.
They're a band in the truest collective sense but the songwriting
centres around Matt Walker and Shane Reilly, who split the songs 50/50
this time around. That said, there isn't a clear sonic and poetic
delineation between their respective songs. They all incorporate
mystical, swirling psych-pop elements, that add colour and
otherworldliness to what are essentially songs from the template of
classic country music, whether that's the smooth tones of the Tulsa
Sound, Willie Nelson-styled balladry or the arch-songwriter shapes of
Harry Nilsson, Jimmy Webb and Randy Newman.
Opener ‘Keeping Up With Yesterday’ is an audacious start, on the back of
Reilly's soaring string arrangement. Walker's ‘Just Wastin’ Time’ is a
melodic honky-tonk number that switches between earthbound and
daydreaming moods. ‘I Broke A Heart’ demonstrates how inventive they can
get with guitar and pedal steel sounds, adding a Twin Peaks vibe to a
Roy Orbison-styled croon. ‘People Funny’ takes the sonic gumbo approach
to the outer limits with its tough groove. ‘Black Rose’ on the other
hand plays it straight, allowing its perfect mix of melody and
melancholy to ring true.
This Is Not A Dream is populated by songs that touch on reality vs.
inhabiting one's self-created world. There are some heady concepts at
play yet the band never overcook them. The real stroke of genius is the
way they've married those ideas with a symbiotic musical universe. They
may be part of the Americana scene but Lost Ragas aren't the
stay-at-home types, they're adventurers looking to explore new and
psychedelic frontiers and the transmissions they're sending back are
quite mesmerising.
Chris Familton
Review by Marty Boulton
Sydney Morning Herald - Sticky Carpet
September 5, 2019
album of the week
Lost Ragas
This Is Not A Dream
(Brown Truck Records)
★★★★
There's a line Matt Walker sings at the end of Morning Star, the second
track on Lost Ragas' follow up album to 2015's Trans Atlantic Highway,
that hints at the sense of exploration and adventure in their music.
Long hailed as a cracking live outfit, Walker and his bandmates don't
rush to record, opting instead to seek out lyrical inspiration and just
the right mix of blues, roots and psychedelic pedal steel that brings
the whole shebang together in a genuine, considered fashion.
"The beauty of endlessness, gazing up at the morning star," Walker
sings, and you just know he didn't find this line sitting in his
bedroom.
"The last time I was in
the desert, it wasn’t really the desert. In fact, we didn’t venture far
past Broken Hill, but the release of open landscape was still a
refreshing thing."
Exploring the great unknown can help you find a place for pared-back
reflection and inspiration. If you’re lucky, maybe even a spirit animal
– though in Australia, it will likely turn out to be poisonous. When
Lost Ragas frontman Matt Walker decided to clear his mind prior to the
band’s next national tour, however, he really didn’t skimp on space.
“This is a step up in the adventure stakes, I’ve got to say,” he says.
“I’ll be hiking through the Flinders Ranges for a week before the tour.
I’m going semi-desert, sleeping beneath the stars, in caves. Hiking
around trying to find The Lost Sound, something like that. I’m
definitely thinking of the next Ragas album, so it may be a little bit
like that Mighty Boosh episode, wandering around looking for wisdom. One
of the mates I’m going with has a portable recorder; I’ll have a few
instruments with me. I think we’ll definitely do some recording out
there, but what it leads to, who knows? We’re doing it all cowboy-style,
sleeping with no tents. There’s one night in the cave on the side of a
mountain, so you hope it’s going to be inspiring out there.”
There’s always the chance Walker might come across some kind of human
subspecies that’s been living in the caves undisturbed for centuries and
is now baying for blood, but that’s always the gamble with creative
exploration. While this hike will cover new ground, Walker has had the
opportunity to visit vast swathes of Australia over the years. He is a
seasoned solo performer, but has also earned great acclaim with The
Necessary Few, Ashley Davies, Tex Perkins, Archie Roach – the list goes
on. Suffice to say, he has had a front-row view of the shifting
Australian music scene.
“The whole Americana renaissance is something I’ve definitely noticed,”
he says. “Festivals we’ve been getting picked up for are getting more
aligned with this movement, like Dashville Skyline in the Hunter Valley
and Out On The Weekend in Melbourne. But I think Australian music has
always had a strong country scene. There are so many artists, and if you
look back there’s a really strong Aboriginal scene aligned with it too.
There’s a whole culture of great country singer-songwriters in the
Aboriginal community, all over Australia.
“Maybe I’ve noticed a change here just because I’m Melbourne-based, but
it feels bigger now then it used to be. Someone told me that Northcote,
just out of the CBD in Melbourne, has the biggest number of country
singers in all Australia. Which is a strange place for it; you’d feel
they’d be all up north. I think in regional and outback Australia, it’s
probably one of the biggest styles of music for the last hundred years.
I’ve been around a while now, and I’ve seen different scenes, different
subgenres in the roots scene, bubble to the surface. Whether it’s garage
rock or blues, your John Butler and Ash Grunwald types, it’s always
interesting to see how it’s all growing, but it doesn’t really affect
what you’re doing yourself. There’s so much work going on inside your
own head to make music, it’s more a sideline interest to see what the
local scene is actually doing.”
While Walker certainly brings a great amount of experience to Lost
Ragas, he is quick to emphasise that he is hardly the life and soul of
this party – it is very much a group concern. “It’s not just Matt Walker
and band. We all contribute, and the guys do fucking amazing harmonies,
switching around instruments. It’s a real collective.”
Their most recent release, Trans Atlantic Highway, has already met with
a great critical reception and will likely introduce Walker and co. to a
whole new set of fans. Happy as they are to find themselves with the
attention, these dark horsemen of the alt-roots scene are pretty
detached from accolades, and remain quite conscious of keeping the
integrity of their songwriting intact.
“You don’t want to sound too confident in your own sound, which I’m not
at all. I’ve always been a believer in…” he pauses to consider. “I
really play music for myself. It’s a contradiction, of course, because
then you record it, you play live shows and hope people like it, but my
main drive to pick up a guitar is kind of selfish. It’s just something I
need to do. I think a lot of musicians are like that, though some
musicians maybe have too many idols. I’ve certainly got them, but I
almost put them on a pedestal where I would never, ever try and emulate
them. They’re too out of reach. If I try and write anything, it’s the
essence of the honesty that the artists I most admire have.
“Dylan once said when he was starting out, watching the old blues guys,
it wasn’t really the notes they played or the words they sang; it was
about the look in their eyes that was the inspiration for him. That has
kind of rung true for me, too. I like artists who boil their words down.
Sometimes, one or two lines can leave enough out that the listener or
reader can make up the missing part. It creates something that I don’t
think you can do otherwise. Something that resonates.”
Lost Ragas play Dashville Skyline, Hunter Valley, Saturday October 3 –
Sunday October 4, and are also appearing at Lazybones Lounge on Friday
October 23. Trans Atlantic Highway is out now independently.
- See more at: http://www.thebrag.com/music/lost-ragas#sthash.sk3iwmec.dpuf
Press Release
Matt
Walker and the Lost Ragas
The great thing about
things coming together naturally, is that when they form the bond is
effortless, and the result is something more than the sum of its parts.
And so Matt Walker and the Lost Ragas arrive with their new album,
Phantom Ride.
In 2012, Matt released a stunning record (In Echoes of Dawn)
largely recorded, written, arranged, produced and played by himself.
Every instrument, every breath, every idea formed over time in his own
recording space - the 8 Track Shack. But once you have finished such a
project, there are decisions to be made, shows to play, and the road to
travel. It’s hard to do this alone. You need a band.
In some way shape or form, all of the Lost Ragas have worked with or
around each other over the years, but never with the line-up as it is.
Matt Walker - guitars / vocals
Shane Reilly- pedal steel / guitars / vocals
Roger Bergodaz – bass
and Simon Burke - drums
Each member of the band offers a wealth of experience, and a taste for a
song. This bent toward the song’s best interest may sound like a simple
desire, but it’s not as common as you might think.
In Echoes of Dawn is such a gentle record, and as such, the early
shows as the Lost Ragas we're tentative, gentle affairs, but over time,
the line-up injected new songs, and developed a sound that is familiar
and yet totally on its own plane. A sparse, Baron Rhythm section
approach, layered with captivating guitar textures, creating something
that is delicate yet powerful, laid back and intense. The live shows
have moments quiet enough to hear a pin drop, and powerful enough to
drive a nail into the ground.
It grew into something much more than just some guys playing another
guy’s record. That would have crashed and burned. Walker was brave
enough to let everyone make it their own from the outset, and so they
did. In Echoes of Dawn is, quite frankly, a record too beautiful
to be recreated, and too involved to be copied. So the Lost Ragas
didn't walk that path.
They played shows, and they continued to develop the Lost Ragas’
sound. A sound that allows for the space within a song to be taken
somewhere new each time. Leaving the path without losing the way
perhaps.
At some point, talk of a new album came up. The band is filled with
songwriters and producers, and guys not always playing their first
instrument, so this was always going to be a process far removed from
what Matt had just come from, and in fact having been a solo artist for
so long, may have been a process never experienced before.
And so, Phantom Ride was born. Recorded over a number of sessions
in mid-late 2013 at Tendertrap Studio with the steady hand of Bergodaz
pushing the faders and the entire band providing a mixture of songs that
were to go through ‘the Ragas’ and take on an entirely new form. This
was no longer a solo experience for Walker.
"Phantom ride" refers to a genre of film made popular late in the 19th
century where the directors would strap a camera on the front of a
moving vehicle. The effect was to see everything moving in front of you,
but no clear indication of what is propelling the images. The "phantom"
is this invisible force.
It is an album put together by four people driven by songs. The premise
was to keep the record simple, keep the takes as live as possible,
minimize overdubs, and for each song to have a character of its own but
to fit with the rest. When you have a song that can stand up on its own,
it is surely the musicians' purpose to stay out of the way, do only what
is required and allow it to do what it will. I think if you asked any of
the Lost Ragas, they would all say that that is one of the true
pleasures of being in the band. No one is stepping on anyone else.
Unless, of course, that is what's required …..
the Phantom Ride.
