Review by Samuel J.Fell.
Pete Cornelius – Southern (Independent)
Having released a dozen albums over a career spanning some twenty years, Pete Cornelius hardly needs an introduction – he’s the quintessential road-dog, two-lane blacktop passing beneath his wheels at a rate hardly matched, his guitar and vocal prowess known about the land. And, as one would expect from an artist as accomplished as Cornelius, over this time he’s evolved, he’s grown and matured into a musician of note – not merely a journeyman, Pete Cornelius has become, slowly and quietly perhaps, the full musical package, as is blindingly obvious after even a cursory listen to his latest effort, Southern.
A native Tasmanian, Southern then is based down south, a clutch of songs that, for the most part, stem from his home state and paint vivid pictures of life lived in small-town familiarity, of the itch to leave and the ache to return. Opener, ‘Cruickshank’, gives some history, relating to the captain of a shipwrecked off the barren Tasmanian coast an eon ago, a buzzing riff-driven tune, down and dirty, before the rolling and anthemic ‘Sick Of This Town’ signals an uncoiling of influence that comes to colour the remainder of the record. Swathes of country twang permeates a couple of songs (‘Hot On The Heels’, ‘On The Road’), while the use of the Hammond organ (courtesy of both co-producer Matt Fell and Randal Muir) particularly on the cover of Don Walker’s ‘Everybody’, adds a lowdown greasy soul vibe to proceedings.
Elsewhere, ‘Troubled Mind’ features a Pink Floyd-esque wall of sound guitar solo; ‘Greasy RNRNB’ wouldn’t be out of place in any greasy tonk somewhere south of the Mason Dixon; and ‘Sump Oil City’, with its slow-burning blues groove and Waits-esque junk percussion (with backing vocals from Claire Anne Taylor), is pure Cornelius, a slithering tune that one comes back to, again and again, a tale of destruction left in the wake of progress. The other cover on Southern is a cut of Mia Dyson’s ‘Any Three Chords’, which closes the album out, subtle slide guitar and an upbeat feel that also carries with it a tinge of melancholy, testament to Cornelius’s vocal delivery.
All these sonic influences meld together in a very subtle way however, hardly defining a specific song, instead imbuing them somewhat before moving on – as such, there are no country songs on Southern, there are no blues songs, there are no soul songs; rather, there are songs that are rooted in these hallowed genres, sure, but each song uses it to solid effect as opposed to basing themselves around it. Indeed, these songs are Pete Cornelius songs, built from the ground up by a man who has, as mentioned, grown and matured and so anything he does, he does with all that growth and history running through his blood.
As well, while Cornelius is perhaps best known, to the casual fan at least, as a more than capable slinger of the six-string, where Southern stands tall is in the storytelling that winds its way through these ten tracks; the songwriting here is key. The themes – leaving a small town, the death of the small town, the sometimes-explosive changes that life can bring, love – are simple ones, but Cornelius paints pictures around them that brings them to life in new and refreshing ways; he’s not trying to reinvent the wheel here, and he doesn’t have to; three chords and the truth, as they say.
All in all, Southern is the mark of an artist who’s been there and done it, but instead of merely passing through, has learnt from the experience. Again, Pete Cornelius has grown and matured as an artist over the past couple of decades, and Southern shows very plainly, how he has indeed become the full musical package.