Twenty years ago this week, I released my second solo record ‘On the beach at first light’.
It was a bit of a turning point for me. I’d spent the previous 12 months touring the P76 ‘Into the Sun’ album, which I was pretty proud of. But I was ready to move on.
‘Into the Sun’ was essentially a concept album. I was fixated at the time with the idea of making a record that sounded and felt like the Australian summer, which I think we managed to do. But one was enough.
I’d been chatting for a little while with a friend named Gilles Raffier who ran a small French label called Pop the Balloon about doing a European-only release. Gilles had built up an impressive catalogue over the years with the likes of Dwight Twilley, Paul Collins (Beat), Dom Mariani, Flamin’ Groovies, The Barracudas, The Moberlys, my former band Stoneage Hearts and of course my debut solo 7” vinyl single about six months earlier. It felt like the right place for me to be at the time.
The EP came out through Pop the Balloon on CD on 1 November 2002 in fairly small numbers, primarily focused on the European market. We were making plans for a European tour and I was working on my follow-up debut full-length solo album ‘Summer city’. Tragically, Gilles passed away unexpectedly not long after and we never got to spend that European summer together hanging out, playing shows like we’d been planning.
Looking back, ‘On the beach at first light’ was a first step towards an eventual obsession with microscopic events, places and things that happen in everyday urban, suburban and regional Australia, which has dominated my writing ever since.
It was recorded at the same Melbourne studio (Birdland) with the same engineer (Michael Alonso) and the same core band (Tim Mills and Geoff Barnes) as ‘Into the Sun’, only 12 months later. It has a familiar sound to its predecessor, but the songs take it somewhere else.
‘On the beach at first light’ was a stepping stone from one phase and the next. Three of the four songs on the EP were eventually re-recorded for subsequent releases and the one that wasn’t (‘Friday night’) is probably the standout for me.
You might’ve missed it the first time around. But if you’re feeling nostalgic and looking for something a bit different to unearth this week, it might be worth a spin. You’ll find it on all of the major streaming platforms.
