Description
How did seven years slip by? Since the release of their ‘Rising Waters’ LP, Tom Lyngcoln, Matt Weston and Dan McKay were drawn inescapably back to The Nation Blue after several years pursuing individual creative, professional and personal endeavours and operating the band bi-annually. Musical detours have included Harmony, High Tension, Adalita's band, King Cannons and Pale Heads. Recorded live in a vast hall in regional Victoria with friend and producer Mike Deslandes over two summers, 'Black' & 'Blue's' 29 songs are an assured reunion, twenty years distant from the acts’ Tasmanian genesis. A self-professed "big, self sabotaging, deal declining, rapidly ageing, radio-proof, scene-less anomaly," The Nation Blue have long been proof that big studio tricks and complex arrangements are no guarantee of greatness. Their barebones approach has always utilised power and presence to legendary effect. Lyngcoln’s extant guitars and unmistakably unique vocals, Weston’s pummelling signature bass tone and McKay’s precise and relentless percussion driving it all forward. It’s all here on ‘Black’ and ‘Blue’, refined and more urgent than ever, endowed with an abiding feeling of the macabre, sinister and uncomfortably observational. Blue is a rapid-fire, straight up rock record. Tight, taut and trim, this is the fraught, fearless and downright formidable Nation Blue.