With a national tour on the cards and a series of fabulous singles to wet the appetite, Australia’s king of grunge and all round legend Kim Salmon and his merry band of musicians, Smoked Salmon, have just released their album ‘Totally Sick!!’.
There’s a particular kind of quiet madness in releasing an album called ‘Totally Sick!!’ the day before your 70th birthday. Then again, Kim Salmon has never been much of a one for conventional scheduling — or conventional anything, come to think of it. The man who gave the world The Scientists, dragged the Beasts of Bourbon out of some beautifully bilious swamp, and generally served as the presiding deity of Australian underground rock for the better part of five decades, clearly operates on his own metabolic clock.
And if ‘Totally Sick!!’ is any indication, that clock is running absolutely fine.The concept — songs for when you’re not feeling so good, prescriptions from the Salmon medicine cabinet, dispatches from the sickbed — sounds like the kind of joke that could wear thin after about thirty seconds. It doesn’t.
What it actually turns out to be is a remarkably coherent thematic device, a conceptual coat-hook on which Salmon hangs a collection of tracks that, in true Smoked Salmon fashion, sit seamlessly alongside the old stuff you love while remaining completely, unmistakably now.
Most of the songs here are ones that got lost on the way ‘upstream’ — recovered from the various tributary projects and archive streams that run alongside Salmon’s main channel: the Kim and Leanne sessions, the Precious Jules collaborations, the perpetual creative surplus of a man who simply cannot stop writing. That these tracks feel so cohesive and freshly minted speaks both to the quality of the original material and to the alchemy of the current band.
It’s a totally fabulous over the top cacophony of rough hewn jewels that crackles buzzes like a bad electrical connection with a thousand yard star and a unrelenting swagger. Just what you would expect from the man whose band The Scientists in the eighties invented grunge and the underground paisley movement from the world’s most isolated city, Perth. A sound that created reverberations around the world.
Opening track ‘Self Replicator’ launches like a rocket with a swagger broader than a schooner rolling in a storm, Salmon’s vocals squalling and storming over a buzzsaw guitar that wanders wide-eyed and wildly without restraint above a swirling synth.
The lyrics have all the irreverence you would expect from Salmon:
Got no soul
I’m not even alive
I’m a soul trader
Do you get my get my jive
I like to get about
But you gotta do it for me
You gotta hear me out
You know you can’t ignore me
Second track ‘Fully Sick and Tired’ roars in on a blaze of fuzzy guitars, slamming drums and a sardonic vocal delivery burnished with delicious woo-hoos. A paean to the great Aussie ‘sickie’, the band says of the track:
‘Fully Sick and Tired,’ the 2nd single from Smoked Salmon’s Totally Sick comp differs from the previous single and the rest of the tracks in a couple of ways: It was written and composed by Kim and the band specifically for the album.
Rather than being about sickness or medicine like all of the other tracks, it’s about that great Aussie tradition of ‘taking a sickie’ – i.e. enjoying simultaneously the pleasures of not being sick and not working. Perhaps it’s not strictly true to say that it’s not about medicine as there is probably no better remedy for the ailment of drab workaday life than the sickie.
But enough of what it isn’t! It is a solid slab of rock with pop hooks to boot and a nice line in dry spoken word delivery for an interlude! What more could you possibly want?!
The lyrics are an hilarious wry look at the age old traditions, with a particular antipodean flavour:
Sickness leave accrued
You will be renewed
Now you’ve got the taste
Taste for time to waste
You’re up on the shelf
Citing mental health
Psycho babble hell
Got no soul to sell
Doctor write a script
A certificate
Authenticity
So Medicare free
Delivered with panache and a dollop of insouciance.
“Shine Some Darkness on Me’ slouches along with a bluesy amble, a deliciously sleazy guitar and showcases Salmon’s vocal range beautifully. It’s a laid back delight augmented by an anthemic chorus and a bucketful of attitude.
‘Freudian Slippers’ blasts off with a percussive blast before Salmon’s sardonic delivery enters above wildly oscillating guitars and an underlying drone and fuzz. Salmon says of the track:
‘Freudian Slippers’, like all of the songs from the upcoming Totally Sick album from Smoked Salmon is another of those songs that got lost on the way ‘upstream’! It first appeared on the 2014 release from Kim and Leanne, True West. Kim and Leanne was conceived by Kim with Michael Stranges as a project to feature Leanne Cowie the Scientists drummer alongside Kim.
Kim and Michael had been working under the guise of Precious Jules and this is essentially a PJs (as they liked to call themselves) production.
Michael had the riff and Kim spontaneously sang ‘went to see my shrink and she said what do you think’ as a melody place holder over it. He joked that that it was a Freudian slip to sing such a line and Stranges, in true Stranges form, touchéd with the phrase ‘Freudian slippers’, and voilà! They went to work, nèe play, on it. K&L’s rendering tends toward the heavy Led Zep side of things whereas Smoked Salmon bring out some of the Prince style pop funk that was always hidden in the song.
It’s wild and untamed: Salmon moving from a falsetto to a Las Vegas Lounge tenor then to an excoriating yelp, with a radio feedback blizzard spluttering in the ether. It’s a wild and crazy ride that is utterly cathartic.
‘Fix Me Up’ channels a glam rock stomp with echoes of T-Rex and Bolan vocals and a high-stepping boogie woogie chug that is utterly captivating. Try standing still listening to this. ‘Everybody’s Out of Town’ has a wild and chaotic guitar riff that seems to wobble out of kilter as Salmon’s vocals are louche and carefree delivered in a chemical fugue.
‘Pathologise Me’ is a long cool drink, laid back and brooding over a melodic guitar while ‘Making Ne Better’ thunders through like a freight train, swaggering and bold delivered with an arched brow.
‘Final track ‘There’s A Virus Going Round’ concludes the feat with an archetypal sleazy insouciance threaded with the same sense of humour that pervades this album. The song ebbs and flows with a wild-eyed canter and rumbling and fuzzy.
‘Totally Sick!!’ is exactly what a record from this particular corner of the Australian underground should be in 2026: uncompromising without being po-faced, playful without being lightweight, and possessed of a genuine sense that making music with this much personality is both a craft and a vocation. Salmon first emerged in the late 1970s and has remained active through numerous bands across nearly five decades. If this is what the Salmon medicine cabinet produces, one rather hopes he never fully recovers.
‘It’s’Totally Sick!!’ is out through the inimitable Cheersquad Records & Tapes on 29 May and available in all sorts of queasy colours:
What times are these when despite bilious beige bilge released by commercial radio we still have legends like Salmon (and Dave Graney) standing firm and providing the heartbeat of Australian indie music.
It’s a comprehensive tour that will give eager audiences the pleasure of seeing Salmon and his band showcasing the new album (a few tasty morsels already having been released into the wild), and a lifetime of brilliant music. and live, he is always an absolute electrifying delight. The dates are:
Fri July 24 – Mojo’s, Fremantle – Tix
Sat July 25 – Prince of Wales, Bunbury – Tix
Fri July 31 – Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine – Tix
Sat Aug 1 – Shotkickers, Thornbury – Tix
Sun Aug 2 – Wheatsheaf, Adelaide – Tix
Thu Aug 6 – La La La’s, Wollongong – Tix
Fri Aug 7 – Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham – Tix
Sat Aug 8 – Link & Pin, Woy Woy – Tix
Sun Aug 9 – The Oak Tighes Hill, Newcastle – free show
Fri Aug 14 – Tanswells, Beechworth – free show
Sat Aug 15 – Smiths Alternative, Canberra – Tix
Fri Aug 21 – Republic Bar, Hobart – Tix
Sat Aug 22 – Royal Oak, Launceston – Tix
Fri Aug 28 – Junk Bar, Brisbane – Tix
Sat Aug 29 – Blah Bar, Lismore – Tix
Sun Aug 30 – Cabarita Beach Club, Cabarita – free show
Fri Sep 4 – Young St Tavern, Frankson – tix
Feature Photograph: Maxine Pryce
