After whacking us with his ‘Freudian Slippers’ (see our review here), the legendary Kim Salmon and his merry band of Smoked Salmon are back with the delightfully graphic ‘Fully Sick and Tired’, creating a clear thread with the forthcoming new album ‘Totally Sick’. What a surfeit of whacky goodness.
‘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:
‘Fully Sick and Tired’ is out now and available to download and stream via the link above and all the usual sites.
And what of the forthcoming album? The band says:
Songs for when you’re not feeling so good? Songs for when you need to take a sickie? Feeling fully sick?! Need a bit of a lie down ?! Need something to get you on the road to recovery?! Kim Salmon’s had the prescriptions for you throughout the nineties, the naughties and NOW! Fix Me Up, There’s A Virus Going Round, cos Everybody’s Out Of Town so get into your Freudian Slippers while Smoked Salmon bring you their catchiest strains!
Get Totally Sick Now!!
It’s out through the inimitable Cheersquad Records & Tapes on 29 May and available in all sorts of queasy colours:
Kim Salmon’s current tour draws to a close this Saturday night April 18 at the Rosemount Hotel in Perth.
Kim Salmon of course needs no introduction, but, as is always the way, I will anyway: leader of the legendary swamp pioneers The Scientists (who reformed last year for a series of gigs) and The Beasts of Bourbon, he has been at the very beating heart of indie music in Australia and leading the world with the paisley-tinged grunge that emanated from Western Australia in the eighties: a true pioneer and often labelled as the ‘Godfather of Grunge’.
Smoked Salmon is an international collective of musicians serving the great genius.
