Mick Thomas - These Are The Songs : A Mick Thomas Retrospective (2017)

Raconteur, troubadour, balladeer and poet, Mick Thomas is best known as the song master of pub-rock icons Weddings Parties Anything. His ever-evolving talents as a writer and performer defines a career as intriguing as it is enduring. His knockabout image partly explains his close relationship with his audience. They see him as one of them. A loyal mob who have followed him from the Weddo’s through his solo career, Mick’s fans relate to his wistful, sentimental and nostalgic lyrics. Themes such as Australian history, fleeting or lost love, the bittersweet realities of life’s merry-go-round, alienation, and football, are wrapped in a positive, triumph over adversity message. The characters in Mick’s songs are everyday battlers, as are he and his fans.

These Are the Songs is a lovingly crafted compilation album spanning the past eighteen years and more of Mick Thomas’ creative life. From the wry and laconic observations of ‘The Lonely Goth’ to the wit and whimsy of ‘You Remind Me’, the soaring growl of ‘Hard Currency’ to the pure joyous on-the-road fun of ‘Sleep on Your Floor’ and ‘The Last of the Tourists’, this is a classic set of tunes performed by a loose but lovingly selected bunch of players. The album is the companion to Mick’s new book These Are the Days, a joyous autobiographical tale of an inspired and uniquely Australian creative force. The album finishes with four bonus recordings including a cheeky duet with Ruby Boots on Bob Dylan’s latter day classic ‘Most of the Time’, in a classic Lee Hazlewood / Nancy Sinatra style adaption. Mick’s affable growl is off-set perfectly by Ruby’s soaring nu-country contralto. For a record that spans a vast variety of recording situations and musicians the album is impressively cohesive. Mick’s long-time musical companion Squeezebox Wally features on many of the tracks, as the various line-ups of his band’s The Sure Thing and The Roving Commission navigate a repertoire of enigmatic country folk rock gems.