Sunstroke: The Cruel Sea rolls on and on …
With a new album and a national tour, rock band The Cruel Sea is back in business with Tex Perkins out front.
After a hiatus from recording that lasted almost a quarter of a century, The Cruel Sea are back in business with a new album, Straight Into The Sun, and a national tour.
Frontman Tex Perkins still remembers the first time he saw the band at Sydney’s Harold Park Hotel. Back then the outfit was playing instrumentals that resembled a film noir version of The Shadows. Pretty soon Perkins was writing words and melodies and fronting the band. Albums such as This Is Not The Way Home and The Honeymoon Is Over became critical and commercial hits.
In 2025 it’s a delight to see that Straight Into The Sun hasn’t gone directly to streaming services. You can purchase it on vinyl as well. The analogue format serves the band well.
“You can’t argue with the convenience of streaming services,” says Perkins on the line from his record company office in Sydney. “Literally, whatever part of the history of music that you want to listen to is all there. It’s quite magnificent. New music, old music, all music, it is so accessible, but I’m very glad to see the re-emergence of vinyl and the art form of the vinyl record cover return.
“It was quite a thing,” he says of the 12-inch by 12-inch format. “An album cover meant something, as did the way a vinyl album was packaged with liner notes in a sleeve … all those details. I’m really glad to see that format coming back.”
You might like
Perkins grew up in a family that loved buying records and, better still, their tastes were diverse.
“I grew up with older siblings who all had small record collections, but they were distinctly different from each other,” he says. “My hippie sister would listen to Ravi Shankar and Bob Dylan and Donovan.
“My straighter brother would listen to Elton John, Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney and Wings. Then my other brother would listen to Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent and the Sex Pistols and Iggy Pop and the Velvet Underground. So I kind of absorbed all that, whether I wanted to or not.
“When I started buying albums, there was sometimes very little information about it. I remember trying to judge a band and their music on what was on the album cover. The first time I went to Toombul Music (in Brisbane) with $20 in my pocket, I walked away with Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare.”
Returning to The Cruel Sea was primarily driven by Perkins’ desire to work again with guitarist Danny Rumour. The band lost James Cruickshank to bowel cancer in 2015. Joining The Cruel Sea now is the acclaimed guitarist Matt Walker.
The Cruel Sea’s national tour starts May 1.
Subscribe for updates
Much of the band’s new album began with Rumour giving Perkins an instrumental. Melody and words were built on that.
“Some of these instrumentals will come with a title. For instance, the song Down Below came from an instrumental called King Tide,” explains Perkins of the process. “That was very early on. But, yeah, I bring the titles and the lyrics. Sometimes I work back from a title or a punchline.
“For instance, The Honeymoon Is Over – that whole thing was based around that idea of, ‘I’m going to get this tattoo changed to another girl’s name’. I actually knew guys who had done that and I thought it was hilarious. This one particular guy was so ridiculous … carelessly romantic. He would literally be going out with a girl for three weeks, and on goes the ink. Then they would break up. It was an actual thing that I witnessed, the tattoo of the old girlfriend being replaced by the tattoo of the new girlfriend.
‘I’ve always got my ear open for a good title. That’s where the seed will lie a lot of the time’
“But, generally, a lot of the writing will come in a flurry. I think I have sort of off seasons, but I’ve always got my ear open for a good title. That’s where the seed will lie a lot of the time. Often if you’ve got a good, strong, title, that’ll suggest the rest of the lyrics”.
For the new record, the idea was as straightforward as committing to recording ten new songs.
“The mission statement was we wanted to make a single disc album,” Perkins explains. “That’s mainly due to thinking in terms of format. Forty-five minutes of music is about as much as you want to put on the two sides of a vinyl album. Otherwise you’re kind of squashing things, or it becomes a double album.
“In the CD age, we didn’t have to worry about that. There’d be 15 tracks and you had eighty minutes, but now we’re back thinking of the format of the vinyl LP. I like the parameters that sets. I think the art of creating a cohesive work, for an album, is best represented in that format”.
Straight Into The Sun is out now. The Cruel Sea’s national tour begins in Adelaide on May 1.
For tour dates, go to facetofacetouring.com.au/current-tours/the-cruel-sea-straight-into-the-sun-tour