STEPHEN CUMMINGS – GOOD BONES

“Sick of looking into the past”, sings Stephen Cummings on The Brighter the Light, a delicate waltz from his latest retrospective, Good Bones. “Some things can’t be changed.” Here he’s playing it dirty and lean with his back catalogue, so call him perverse if you like, but then, he’s always been  a bit of a mercurial cove (or as he would have it, “a pickled character from a Gore Vidal novel”),  a rumpled sophisticate who’s followed his muse up some strange alleyways.  He made an impression with the Sports in the late 70s, playing spiky pub-rock (represented here by Vampire Girl and Hot Dog), and has spent the decades since loitering at the edges of the Australian music scene. On What Did the Detective Say, he croons himself hoarse relating the details of a run-in with the law, and the effect is clammy and claustrophobic. He’s a hell of a singer, Stephen Cummings, and a handsome man still, though the hair is long grey and the flesh begun to sag. He’s got good bones, as do these songs.
***1/2