Truckload of Sky: The Lost Songs of David McComb Vol. 1

Truckload of Sky: The Lost Songs of David McComb Vol. 1

In 1988, you could buy a car for $100. That is, if you lived in Perth and, like me, had friends in low places (well, I had one friend who travelled the low road, if you know what I mean). Anyway, I knew the bomb was trouble, it was unregistered for starters. My mate told me that much at least.

A big, green gas guzzling monster, it’s best feature was a working cassette player, which I flogged to death by playing Calenture until the BASF tape snapped. The car gave up the ghost towards the end of that summer. It was heap (as in ‘heap of shit’)— I had to top up the leaky radiator every 5 or 6 kilometres, so no trips down south. One day, I pushed the beast too far and it shuddered to a halt just as I pulled into a parking space outside my flat in Highgate, huge plumes of grey smoke pouring out of the engine to the strains of ‘Vagabond Holes’. That was that. I left Perth for good a few weeks later.

The car and Calenture remind me of the last summer I spent in Perth as a resident. It was a typical Perth summer: in other words, fucking hot! Day after day, the temperature hovered around 40 degrees, or so it seemed. Despite the heat and my precarious mode of transportation, life was looking pretty good. I was in love and I was about to head ‘over east’ to take up a new job and start a new chapter in my life. Ah, so much promise. Needless to say, everything turned to shit — I lost the girl, I lost the job, and I lost my mind (until the wheel of fortune turned things around, temporarily —we’re all on borrowed time, folks).

Anyway, today, hearing a song like ‘Hometown Farewell Kiss’ takes me back to that remote period of time. I can’t listen to Calenture without feeling as though I’m being haunted by ghosts. Some of these spirits I’d rather forget, but others, like David McComb, the long-dead lead singer of The Triffids, remind me of how cool things once were for me as a young man. How brilliant it felt to cruise down to Fremantle on Stirling Highway, winding around the Swan river under the expansive canopy of Perth’s bright blue sky. Windows down, stereo blasting, summer breeze blowing through my hair. Good company, wild parties, great music, lost time. Nothing evokes this happy period more than the sound of David McComb’s voice, which featured heavily on the soundtrack of my life in the 1980s.

So, I was thrilled to hear that some of McComb’s collaborators and admirers were releasing an album, Truckload of Sky: The Lost songs of David McComb, comprised of some of his more obscure compositions (mostly drawn from his final decade, I think). The album does not disappoint. And even though we don’t hear his voice on this remarkable set of recordings, McComb’s spirit manifests in every track. The album is spooky, but in a good way. The ghost, as the late Niall Lucy, one of McComb’s old friends, might have told us, is a curious entity. It’s neither present or absent, material or immaterial. The ghost fucks with time by putting it out of joint by erasing clear distinctions between past, present and future. The ghost might also make demands on the living to remember what has passed and why. Sometimes, they might issue an imperative to seek justice on their behalf (like literature’s most famous ghost, King Hamlet). Anyway, as I listen to Truckload of Sky, I can’t help thinking that the musicians on the album are seeking justice for McComb, for he deserves a much wider audience; he was, after all, one of the greatest songwriters to smudge the air with song and his relative neglect by the musi buying public is criminal.

The album begins with a trilogy of bitter love songs. ‘Kneel So Low’ is a sequel of sorts. Lyrically it evokes ‘The Seabirds’, the opening track from Born Sandy Devotional, in its nautical imagery and its ‘cold opening’, but whereas the older song conjures the utter desolation of rejection, the narrator of ‘Kneel So Low’ rebukes his Ex for changing her mind —it’s too late, baby, “I’m the type that bears a grudge.” Yet, he acknowledges that things are complicated. She is after all “unforgettable, unlovable, unliveable” (a bit like the girl who used to ride in my big green automobile). I love the cutting lead guitar tone on this track, which supports the song’s sentiment perfectly. ‘Kiss Him (He’s History)’ is a bit like emotionally sadistic Femme Fatale’s playbook — the twist is that the song is narrated by a victim of heartbreak. Do you really want to know how to hurt someone? Well, this is how you can inflict the maximum degree of pain: make the courtship unforgettable, get close and intimate, and when he’s under your spell, drive the knife home. Rob Snarski delivers a beautifully nuanced performance on this track — his phrasing serves the song perfectly. It’s simultaneously dramatic and lush. Snarski is another artist who merits much wider recognition (it’s easy to understand why Snarski was one of McComb’s favourite singers). Angie Hart’s unmistakable Aussie drawl gives a compelling reading of ‘Second Nature’ — another song about people hurting each other despite their best intentions —that fucking wheel of fortune won’t stop turning.

The next batch of songs are much darker. If anyone is capable of ventriloquising McComb, it’s J.P. Shilo — his tone, timbre and phrasing make him sound uncannily like the author of ‘Lucky for Some’. This is not to diminish Shilo’s talent in any way. The man is no mere copyist and he is magnificent on this particular song, which, as I read it, is a missive from a dying man. This song is truly haunting with its narrator staring up at a ceiling fan from his hospital bed while ruminating on how fickle life can be. Structurally, the lyrics are reminiscent of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Who by Fire’ — the pensive narrator reels off a list of the ways some people get fucked up while others seemingly glide through life— “some get branded/some get hung/some keep their hands clean/lucky for some” — did I mention that ruminations on the vicissitudes of fortune appear in several of this album’s songs? Well, they do. The song also reminds of Skip James’ harrowing ‘Washington D.C. Hospital Center Blues’ —another, spooky, dark song about illness and mortality. Shilo’s howl is as unsettling as Skip James’ falsetto. For me, this is the album’s highlight.

‘So Good to be Home’, sung by Snarski, takes me right back to 1988 and puts me in that fucking green car with ‘Hometown Farewell Kiss’ on the cassette player. However, the song is very different in sentiment and tone from what might appear to be its counterpart on Calenture. On one level, it’s about a prodigal son flying back home after a long absence. As the lead singer in a travelling band, McComb must have viewed his home town from the vantage point of a plane more times than most, yet there is something unsettling about this homecoming. I don’t think it’s a simple paean to Perth (despite the references to neat lawns and the river). It’s more like ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’ or ‘Long Black Limousine’ — I get the feeling that the song is more about the yearning for home, or the comfort that the idea or memory of home might offer in a time of crisis (it’s hard not to read these lyrics in the light of McComb’s untimely death). Snarski, again, turns in a flawless performance. Indeed, there’s something in the singer’s voice that conjures this spectral reading: I can almost hear the traces of lost time. Time is definitely out of joint here.

‘Look Out for Yourself’ is sung from a desolate, lonely place: it poses the question: who can you turn to in your darkest hour? Well, the answer my friends doesn’t provide much comfort, for we are condemned, it seems, to face the final curtain by ourselves, hence, the imperative: look out for yourself. Bleak stuff, delivered with fortitude and a hint of swaggering bravado by Romy Vager. And as if things weren’t bad enough, the next track, ‘Make Believe We’re Not Here in Hell’, is about denying the reality of dire circumstances. This is another one of those ghostly time-travel songs, for me, at least (since the act of listening will open different portals in time for every listener). Anyway, I can hear the rumble of that green car as I listen to this track, which reminds me of my favourite song on Calenture, ‘Blinded by the Hour’ (the connection is not literal — both songs seem to be about bad faith and self-delusion). Where do we flee when we are fucked up? It seems that the gospel according to McComb exhorts us to take refuge in the imagination: ‘Maybe it’s time to make believe/And to sing these songs/If it stops the pain/But I don’t mind/And I won’t tell/If we make believe we’re not here in hell’.

The final song on the vinyl album is ‘This Whole World’s About to Slide’. Prescient or what? Remember that big blue canopy of sky I mentioned earlier? Well, the haunted narrator of this number needs a ‘truckload of sky’ to hold him down. Simon Breed nails this complex lyric with its emotional twists: ‘So tell me, just how lucky I got?’. Not very is the obvious response if one pays heed to the suspicious minds and chattering spooks that work their way through this track, sonically and lyrically. This song has grandeur and gravity and is a fitting finale to this extraordinary record. If you buy the CD version of the album, you get 3 bonus tracks, which come from McComb’s teenage years. The musicians really make these songs shine and they remind us just how precocious a talent McComb was even at a tender age. If ever a ghost deserved justice, it’s David McComb. I can’t wait for volume 2.