After a recording hiatus lasting nearly a quarter of a century, The Cruel Sea is back in business with a new album, Straight Into The Sun.
Frontman Tex Perkins still remembers the first time he saw the band at the Harold Park Hotel in Sydney. Back then, the outfit were playing instrumentals echoing a film noir version of The Shadows. Pretty soon Tex was writing words and melodies and fronting the band. Albums such as This Is Not The Way Home and The Honeymoon Is Over were critical and commercial hits.
Straight into the Sun is The Cruel Sea’s first album in a long time
In 2025, it’s a joy to see Straight Into The Sun hasn’t gone directly to streaming services. You can buy it on vinyl and the analogue format serves the band well.
‘You can’t argue with the convenience of streaming services,’ admits Perkins on the line from his record company office in Sydney. ‘Literally, whatever part of the history of music you want to listen to, is all there. It’s quite magnificent: new music, old music, all music is so accessible. But, I’m very glad to see the re-emergence of vinyl and the art form of the vinyl record cover return.
The beauty of vinyl
‘It was quite a thing,’ he says of the twelve-inch by twelve-inch format. ‘An album cover meant something, as did the way a vinyl album was packaged with liner notes in a sleeve … all those details. I’m really glad to see that format coming back. I think the convenience of streaming and the tangible joy (of vinyl) are the two best formats.’
Perkins grew up in a family that loved buying records and their tastes were diverse.
‘I grew up with older siblings who all had small record collections, but they were distinctly different from each other,’ he tells me. ‘My hippie sister would listen to Ravi Shankar and Bob Dylan and Donovan.
‘My straighter brother would listen to Elton John, Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney and Wings. Then my other brother would listen to Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop and the Velvet Underground. So I kind of absorbed all that, whether I wanted to or not.
‘When I started buying albums, there was sometimes very little information about it. I remember trying to judge a band and the music by what was on the album cover. The first time I went to Toombul Music with $20 in my pocket, I walked away with Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare.’
Classic line-up with one new band member
Returning to The Cruel Sea was primarily driven by Perkin’s desire to work with the guitarist Danny Rumour again. The band lost James Cruickshank to bowel cancer in 2015. New band member is the widely acclaimed guitarist Matt Walker.
The band’s new album still blends various musical influences honed over The Cruel Sea’s career of over thirty years. Straight into the Sun delivers rich, soulful vibes, infused with the band’s trademark dark humour.
Much of the new material began with Rumour giving Perkins an instrumental. Melody and words were built on that.
‘Some of these instrumentals will come with a title. For instance, the song Down Below (from the album of the same name) came from an instrumental called “King Tide”,’ says Perkins. ‘That was very early on. I bring the titles and the lyrics. Sometimes I work back from a title or a punchline.
Tattoo romance inspired song
‘For instance, The Honeymoon Is Over; that whole thing was based around that idea of, “I’m going to get this tattoo changed to another girl’s name”. I knew guys who had done that and thought it was hilarious. This one particular guy was so ridiculous, you know, carelessly romantic. He would literally be going out with a girl for three weeks and on goes the ink and then they would break up. It was a thing I witnessed: the tattoo of the old girlfriend being replaced by the tattoo of the new girlfriend.
‘Generally, a lot of the writing will come in a flurry. I think I have sort of off seasons, but I’ve got my ear open for a good title. That’s where the seed will lie a lot of the time. Often if you’ve got a good, strong, title, that’ll suggest the rest of the lyrics.’
For The Cruel Sea, this time around, the idea was to commit to recording ten new songs.
Format matters
‘The mission statement was we wanted to make a single disc album,’ says Perkins. ‘That’s mainly due to thinking in terms of format. Forty-five minutes of music is about as much as you want to put on the two sides of a vinyl album. Otherwise, you’re kind of squashing things, or it becomes a double album.
‘In the CD age, we didn’t have to worry about that. There’d be 15 tracks and you had 80 minutes, but now we’re back thinking of the format of the vinyl LP. I like the parameters that sets. The art of creating cohesive work, for an album, is best represented in that format.’
Straight Into The Sun is out now. The Cruel Sea start their Australian tour on 1 May in Adelaide. Their Queensland gig is at The Tivoli in Fortitude Valley on 18 May. National dates are here
IMAGE of The Cruel Sea at top of story by Kristyna Higgins
