Saturday, April 1, 2017

All Fools' Day

Today is April Fools' Day, but one wouldn't really know it without looking at the calendar. In an era in which fake news, 'alt-facts', and hoaxes perpetrated by Eastern European teens, the very idea of one particular day set aside for playing pranks and jokes on people seems passé... what good is April Fools' Day if every day is a fools' day?

At any rate, All Fools' Day was the seventh album released by Australian band the Saints (I posted about the Saints on All Saints' Day... All Saints', All Fools', all good). In another post, I compared the band to LA's X, noting their transition from punk aggression to a more mature, rootsier sound. At any rate, here's the title track from All Fools' Day:





As an added bonus, I'll throw in a video for the 1984 single Ghost Ships:





Watching older Australian promotional videos, I am struck by how bright the pubs are... I don't think that look would fly here in the NY metro area, where dark wood and dark moods are the norm. Also, antipodean bands of the 1980s seemed to have a strange fascination with ghost ships... was it something in the water?

2 comments:

Harry Hamid said...

Love the voice. There's an Australian band called The Drones that has a lead singer with the same kind of rough vocals and attitude. It really works for me.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

It's amazing how the band 'matured'. The vocals in the band's earlier stuff sound so high-pitched and raw compared to the more 'growly' mature vocals.