Music as chronicle
True Believers
By John Schumann
Columbia
Reviewed by John Williams
When Phil Ochs released his 1964 album All the News Fit to Sing, he continued a folk tradition of being the chronicler of popular concerns and struggle.
So too the groundbreaking If You Don't Fight You Lose by Redgum was a milestone for Australian folk music. It emerged at a time when Australians questioned their part in the great conversation with humanity. Issues like unemployment, immigration, the environment, the Americanisation of culture and the rights of women, workers and indigenous Australians were at the core of the album.
True Believers is Schumann's third album since his departure from Redgum (the second being a children's album), and follows on the impressive Etched in Blue.
The years have mellowed the cutting, and at times simple, sloganism of the early Redgum albums. However, the intensity and passion of Schumann's music remain. True Believers contains 12 tracks which address such issues as the environmental danger facing Wilpena and the entrepreneurial obscurity of the 1980s.
Schumann also covers J. Cains' "Working Class Man" and Patterson's "Clancy of the Overflow", attacks the stupidity of war and embarks on a whimsical reminiscing of his school days at "Plympton High".
Musically, the CD is impressive. The production is sharp, and Schumann has retained the folk/rock feel with bright guitar work. The backing vocals are by Renee Geyer and Craig Walsh. Rob Hirst makes an appearance in "Eyes on Fire".