Album Review: The Perfect Crime by Cold Chisel

Look, I realise this is going to be an unpopular thought to voice, but I was incredibly disappointed by The Perfect Crime as an album. It’s fair to say that whilst the Chisels are a viable touring act – witness their excellent NRL Grand Final performance, and try to forget about Barnesy’s interesting choice of footwear – there just isn’t the same studio magic as there was back in the day, when they were at the real peak of their powers.

Don’t get me wrong, vocally, Jimmy Barnes and Ian Moss are great, and there’s nothing wrong with the musicianship, either. In fact, the addition of Charley Drayton on drums adds a new layer to what is already a pretty tight unit. There just wasn't anything on what’s been a pretty hyped release that really reached out and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. I never thought I’d write that about this band.

The songs, more straight rock than the sort of bluesy-rock that has been the band’s hallmark for so long, aren’t bad, per se, they’re just not memorable. ‘All Hell Broke Lucy’ was okay, and the title track was much the same. But none were of the same calibre as their classic studio stuff. The same can definitely be said of Jimmy’s recent solo work. Aside from the duet collection 30:30 Hindsight, I can’t remember the last great Jimmy Barnes album. Per chance, it was released in the last millennium.

Of the two performers who headlined Grand Final shows this past weekend, Cold Chisel in Sydney at the epic NRL decider and Bryan Adams in Melbourne for the lacklustre AFL contest, the battle of the albums they were spruiking was easily and convincingly won by the latter. Unlike the contest between the games themselves.

None of this will matter when it comes to the concert arena, either. Cold Chisel have just released a third show at the soon-to-be-defunct Sydney Entertainment Centre/Qantas Credit Union Arena, so they’re clearly not having any trouble getting anyone in through the gates.

If Sunday night showed us anything, it’s that the Chisels can still dominate live shows (again, the same can be said for Jimmy Barnes, who is still awesome as a live solo performer) and they could not have advertised their spring/summer tour any better than they did with that three-song set.

Let’s be honest, the crowds who’ll flock through the doors of arenas countrywide, and to their sure-to-be-epic Hanging Rock gig, don’t care about the new stuff. They want to hear ‘Khe Sanh’ and ‘Flame Trees’ and ‘Bow River’, and all the other classics from the 1970s and 1980s. Not anything from a sadly underwhelming 2015 release. 

In this instance, that’s probably just as well.