That Long, Cruel Growl

You know a song is truly great when you can remember the exact space in time you first heard it. When you hear it again or simply recall it in your mind and automatically conjure every bodily sensation you experienced in the dim, dark past. The Cruel Sea’s, Better Get A Lawyer is that song for me.

I grew up in a tiny, tiny town on the east coast of Queensland. Employment was limited to the vast array of pubs and clubs which seemed to outnumber our population ten fold. I kind of liked it though because it gave me a chance to listen to lots of music across many and varied genres. Music lit a fire in me the way nothing else seemed to.

The only real problem living in a rural small town was the lack of live and original entertainment. When a band came to town it was a big deal and something I gravitated to like a heat stroked pup lapping water from a backyard hose.

I was working the early shift on the bar one night in the mid nineties when I saw a poster advertising a band I’d never heard of before, The Cruel Sea. They were playing in a neighboring town just over an hour away that night. I’d recently had my license suspended and so had no wheels but at the end of my shift I grabbed a couple of mates and we hitched into town hoping to get in to see this menacing, brooding bunch.

My soul felt wild with the sheer adventure. As was usual back in the day, I had no plans of what we’d do if we didn’t get in, how we’d get home or where we might sleep that night. All I could think of was feeling the pulsing beat of live music under my feet. Just for a little while at least.

We got our tickets and filed into a packed, and I mean balls squished into skinny jeans packed nightclub filled with every nob and yob who had crawled out of their suburban lives for this one night. It was devastatingly hot and thick with the smell of rum and stale beer and I could not have been happier.

I remember it being the strangest light. Dark, yet highly saturated colors that almost sparkled like a crisp black and white photograph with the volume turned up. Just as the heat and noise and bodies were becoming almost unsafe there, sauntering on to the stage was that long, towering line. The hulking, sulking presence of Tex Perkins.

Better Get a Lawyer ricocheted off the back wall full of gnashing, frothing crescendos of horror teeth like the sharpest inhale. She was ruthlessly honest, high on truth and pulsing, red heart, tequila-swilling, tattoo-your-soul adventure. I still remember the feeling of liquid showering over my upturned, rapturous face as Tex took a swing from a dark, glass bottle and sprayed it across the crowd.

That guttural growl was lost sleep and a silver bullet heart filled with a grave digging, bleak theatre of anxiety. Baby, she fought everyday for the glorious fairytale deep down low. Down to the depths of your soul.

Better Get a Lawyer was the first single from the album Three Legged Dog, released in November 1995. The record was said to have been produced in a mere three weeks and I’d always thought that’s how that song felt for me. A sharp, short, spit in your face moment that could never be replicated as hard as you tried. The song itself was heralded as a distinct departure in style for the band, being more akin to spoken word or down and dirty rock god hip hop. Yet it still held that trashy, deep guitar sound of wooden floors and back yard garages that I so loved.

It was the phrasing and lyrical story telling element that grabbed me by my hair. It seemed this was the missing piece of the puzzle in a lot of Australian music of this time. ‘Don’t drop the soap, don’t smoke no dope’. ‘You better get a lawyer son. It better be a reeeaaal good one’. The story seemed to reflect the every day experiences of our twenties. In court for drink driving, speeding, disorderly conduct. Threats of our fathers, bosses, teachers going over our unruly heads. We walked down a lot of dirt tracks, only to turn around and walk back.

When I listen to the song now in my forties, I see the simplicity in both the tune and that time of my life. The art of the song was how that growling distortion made me feel and not so much in the musicianship, although Cruel Sea remains in my opinion, one of the most artistically talented bands from our country. It made me feel as though there was always an adventure, just over the horizon waiting for me. Breathless and just that little bit worse wear but a cracking good time full of booze and belly laughs none the less.