Melbourne rock trio Cannon today release ‘Comet’s Coming’ their new album through Cheersquad Records and Tapes AND they’ll be launching it tonight FRI JUNE 14 at Lulie Tavern with very special guests Al Matcott and it’s FREE entry!
After resuming activity after an absence of more than a decade in 2020, Naarm, Melbourne rock trio Cannon return again with Comet’s Coming, their second full-length album in quick succession.
While its 2021 predecessor Connexion was a chance for a reunion of good friends and a re-exploration of the explosive chemistry that won the band initial acclaim in the mid-2000s, Comet’s Coming, as the title suggests, is perceivably darker affair, as raw tones soundtrack deeper themes and concepts, telling the trio still have plenty of fresh creativity to explore.
Cannon, featuring Mitchy McIvor, Dave Mudie and Adam Green, were ubiquitous on the Australian live circuit during the mid 2000’s peak of the “new rock” revolution. While at the same time their raucous single “Hell” from their debut Hardwood Hits EP, was resonating loudly on the national airwaves, they crossed the country with the likes of McIvor’s cousins in Jet, who were at their peak iPod ad hysteria phase, fellow locals Dallas Crane and internationals including Tenacious D and The Black Keys.
As the new rock wave broke to the softer indie folk sounds prominent toward the end of that decade, Cannon also paused in 2008 with members spending the next decade working on various multiple individual projects including, McIvor with Damndogs, Mudie with Courtney Barnett & Super American Eagle, and Green with Danny Walsh Band.
It was then some ten years later where Dave Mudie recalls a random night seeing each other out at the pub where the idea of getting together for a jam was suggested, “so we all got together”, he confirms, “and it was amazing.” Such was the reignition of energy that the band, “basically wrote a whole record in that first jam”. The resulting debut LP Connexion was warmly received with Tyler Jenke for Rolling Stone echoing the common consensus that, ‘Cannon are still the Aussie rock powerhouse they’ve always been.’
Now Cannon was back and rolling, McIvor who Dave Mudie confirms has always been a “prolific writer,” had soon completed enough material for a second album. Before Mudie was due to hit the road with Courtney Barnett for a year, the band headed back into the studio for a single day with Fabian Hunter (Jade Imagine, Baby Blue) once again at the controls to capture the basic tracking for Comet’s Coming.
In Hunter’s cramped, analogue gear laden Fishbone Tone Shack Studio, the trio recorded hot to tape, giving the new album takes a raw weightiness that is evident from the first listen. Mudie shares, “he’s (Hunter) got a lot of vintage gear and cool tricks, it’s a small space but it really suited us to get in there and play it live”. With most of the songs still fresh from McIvor’s sketch book, the band captured these new compositions with little rehearsal, which Mudie adds translated well to the record, “they weren’t overcooked and were still exciting for us.”
McIvor says the main difference between Comet’s Coming and its predecessor was the difference in time and approach, whereas Connexion, “took over ten years to get together” the band leaned into a high-end production approach which was naturally preferred after such a long break. On Comet’s Coming, he believes most of the work was done at the front end, “the songs were crafted a little bit more, so the reverse happened were we wanted to make sure we reflected how we were sounding in the room, to give it a bit more of an organic feel.”
The album opens with the pulsing and spacious first single “Lithium Springs”, named after a town in the U.S. state of Georgia which was popular with celebrities and politicians in the 1950’s as a holiday destination due to its naturally forming supply of intoxicating Lithium, McIvor reckoning that, “it’s as close to a summer beach song as we’ll get, and we still end up in a spring laced with natural lithium – that’s about right for us.”
Title track “Comet’s Coming” with its staccato guitar figure and lurching overdriven bass arrives next, its pre-apocalyptic theme lifted from the novel “Voss” by British-born Australian fiction writer Patrick White. In the novel the central protagonist Voss, through his epical, troubled voyage across the Australian continent ultimately accepts his destiny. McIvor adds, “it’s a fatalist song about the acceptance of mortality”.
The rubbery soul of Water Over Our Heads comes third in the collection, inspired by a plaque at Kane’s Bridge, which crosses Melbourne’s Yarra River in Fairfield that tells of the 1934 flood which washed the previous incarnation of the walk bridge down river. McIvor noticing that the brass marker recalled that, ‘water was over their heads that day,’ the quote triggering the idea for the song’s themes of abandonment and “the feeling of being left behind”.
Mind Screw finds Cannon seeking new psychedelic ground embracing drums loops, synth triggering guitar lines and manipulative delay explorations. The lysergic feel enhanced by vocal modulation narrating the slowly building wig out, a short sharp DMT trip until the fractals fade and dissipate. McIvor noting that, ‘this one was less rehearsed, and we did it more on the fly, and experimented more, so it was a bit of a departure for us.”
‘Skim the scum that simmers in you,’ implores McIvor on “Skim The Scum”, an on-brand Cannon style lowdown rock n roll lurcher that Dave Mudie suggests has a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club feel to it, adding, “we just tried to keep it dirgy, laid back and a bit filthy.” McIvor considers the song to be, “brutal, honest, and classic Cannon.”
Cannon’s post rehearsal ritual of watching the lengthy Tom Petty documentary Runnin’ Down A Dream gave birth to the song “Ride The River”. The documentary recalls Johnny Cash sending Petty a postcard which read, “you’re a good man to ride the river with.” Petty’s response to Cash’s tiding, “all I want to be in life, is a good man to ride the river with.” The song conveys this sentiment and also asks whether a willingness to collectively ‘ride the river’ is reciprocated. McIvor adds that in terms of how Cannon feels about each other, “that question is rhetorically answered in the affirmative”. It seems Cannon have found in each other those fellow passengers to ride with.
An outlier sonically on Comet’s Coming is the penultimate “Box Cat Blues” a bouncing pop rock gem in the style of Oz poet laureate Paul Kelly during his ‘and the Messengers’ phase, McIvor stating that the song, “recognises that true love is about allowing people to be themselves”. In an enlightening moment of clarity, it was Mitchy’s cat, Boo, who literally inspired this figurative analogy,” jumping in and out of boxes, not having to prove anything to attain his owner’s adoration other than just being.
The album closes fittingly with the melancholic “Last Call”. “We originally had an idea that it was going to be a bit of a bar room, jangly, fast folk song”, recalls McIvor, “like if you were a British band, the crowd would be singing it on the way out of a show”. Tracking everything in the same day meant the overall contact mood of the other songs changed the intended feel of “Last Call”, instead becoming, “sort of downcast, drunken and not so vibrant.” While sombre in the conclusion that both the night and indeed the album is ending, we are left optimistic because, ‘tomorrow is yet to be won.’
It’s this closing sentiment that is perhaps a takeaway from Comet’s Coming, making up for lost time and realising as McIvor points out, “there’s this special harmony and even though we canvas that into heavy rock and noise, there’s a chemistry that we have that’s quite special”. Purposeful songwriting and a creative mandate to capture the live sound of the band has resulted in a cohesive and powerful statement that flows effortlessly from track to track, Cannon have always threatened big things and now they continue to deliver them.
‘COMET’S COMING’ Album Launch, FRI JUNE 14 at Lulie Tavern with very special guests Al Matcott. FREE!
Cannon – Comet’s Coming is out now through Cheersquad Records and Tapes