A to Z: 100 Best Australian Albums so "I" is for...

The Ibis or the Straw-necked Ibis is another bird I can see flying around where I live all the time. They're an odd looking bird or not a pretty one but who cares about that really. All adults have distinctive straw-like feathers on their neck which how they get their name and no feathers on the top of their heads. Their wings look black in the above image but they're (or can be) all-sorts of shinny colors in the right light. Once again the above image is from John Gould's Birds of Australia.

So on with my next albums under the letter "I" which is another vowel and only three this time which is a good thing I was reading that you're suppose to keep your blog post short because people can't or wouldn't read long ones, is that true?

Ill At Ease by The Mark Of Cain
Adelaide's finest band with their break through album, their third album and with only another one album after this one you could say it's going to be their peak. Over the last couple of years they have been talking about a new album but it's been a long time coming, ten years plus now. Back to the mid-90's and Henry Rollins moved to Adelaide for a couple of months to be their producer because basically he wanted a new album by them, he is their biggest fan. I still remember seeing them at a small club and he was there hiding behind the amp tower doing the famous Henry Rollins dance, if you can call it that because imagine him on Dancing With The Stars doing that. Anyway it was hard picking which The Mark Of Cain album but it has to be this one. 


In The Pines by The Triffids
This would have been recorded around the time of my ten birthday and only an hour or two away from where I grew up but I didn't know anything about The Triffids back then. I love them now and this one has to be my favorite album by them. It's the only album to be recorded in Western Australia too and the reissue from a few years ago included everything recorded at the time. It's David McComb's songwriting at his best. Some of these songs were already going to be used for the next planned album so it was somewhat dismissed at the time because it is 8-track cheap recording, just something to do before going into the next real studio. Ravensthorpe is in the middle of nowhere and unless you've come to W.A. you don't know what that means, it's days and hours and hours of driving to get anywhere here and when you get somewhere out in the country it's usually got nothing anyway not even trees sometimes.


Inner City Sound by Various Artists
Based on Clinton Walker's book of the same name which is somewhat of a bible of early Aussie punk rock with this double CD featuring an endless amount of bands from the late 70's and early 80's. With 28 songs on disc one and 20 on disc two. So it features some of my favorite tracks by my all-time favorite bands like Primitive Calculators, Laughing Clowns, The Scientists, Sacred Cowboys, Essendon Airport, X, The Lighthouse Keepers, The Saints which have two tracks, the above band The Triffids plus a few big names you will know like The Go-Betweens, Hunters & Collectors, Severed Heads, The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party but the biggest treat is Rowland S. Howard singing Shivers with his early band Young Charlatans, it's worth it just for that one song. Stay tuned for the letter "J" soon...