The Triffids Born Sandy Devotional by: Al Cottrill Tue:13-Feb-07 Label: Mushroom Year: 1986 WB rating 90 out of 100

“Up until now we've been making records of collections of accumulated songs – this will instead be songs written FOR an LP record with a theme NOT a hotch-potch of historically compiled songs. The theme will be unrequited love but the language will reach way above and beyond that.”

David McComb – 1984

Two years later, The Triffids released Born Sandy Devotional.  Only songwriter and lead singer McComb could have planned the extent to which the album would “reach way above and beyond” the theme of unrequited love, but to know this two years previously shows a man possessed by purpose. To assess it in a retrospective light is to realise the brilliance of Dave McComb, and the beauty of the album he and The Triffids created. Who else could have expected it to be the embodiment of the Australian landscape, a record evoking the solitude, heat and seclusion of Australian life like no other? 

Our existence, hugging the fringes of this ancient slab of rock, has always been a precarious one. We feel resentment towards the interior landscape, preferring instead to derive our identity from the beaches encircling us.  Nameless depths provide far less consternation than the desolate terra nullius within.  It is our interpretation of the land; a sense of hostility and mistrust; uneasiness in our sense of place. But most importantly, it is one born of isolation, the true root of our apprehension.  It is also way of life captured by Born Sandy Devotional.

Born Sandy Devotional begins not with a song, but with an image.  A cover photo of Mandurah, a small Western Australian beachside town, taken from the sky, and although it appears to be summer, in this part of the country it could be any time.  Yellow grass, the beach and eucalyptus, Born Sandy Devotional constantly evokes these small towns in a manner that shows both beauty and triviality.  The minute detail of a life and love are contained within; heartbreaking pieces of a girl’s personal effects in ‘Personal Things’; a love lost to another in ‘Wide Open Road’; and the childhood recollections of ‘Estuary Bed’, all brought into sharp focus against the vastness of the Australian setting. 

The first sound heard on Born Sandy Devotional is that of McComb’s voice, breaking a split second before the first instrument.  It is an unorthodox beginning to a song that rails against conventional opening track behaviour. What is certain is the uneasiness it creates from the start: “the screaming of the gulls/Feeding off the bodies of the fish/thrashing up the bay til it was red.” ‘The Seabirds’ is immediately confronting, the loneliness and despair palpable in its story of relationship breakdown and attempted suicide. It is one of many cynical allegories. ‘Estuary Bed’ follows, a lighter track, but still heavy in metaphor. This time the imagery extends into the Australian landscape, both music and lyrics drawing childhood memories of heat and exclusion: “Sun on the sidewalk is burning their feet/Washing the salt off under the shower.”

‘Tarrilup Bridge’ sees McComb hand vocal duties over to Jill Birt. Sending shivers cracking up your spine, down into your fingers, Birt is channelling the protagonist of an early 20th century suicide. She gives life to Kipling’s female, a chilling composition of flowing locks, porcelain skin, translucent lace, and deathly expression.  A departure from the baleful backdrops created in surrounding tracks, the simple, lilting melody is more unsettling than a chalkboard gouged by stricken nails. Robert McComb’s staccato violin and cello backing create an eerie, menacing atmosphere contrasting painfully with Birt’s childlike delivery, ghoulish in its apathy towards such tragedy. 

With its ominous backing and McComb’s commanding vocals, ‘Lonely Stretch’ recalls Nick Cave at his most imposing. It’s themes of loneliness and confusion are amplified by the urgent, repeated backing vocals. Evil Lee’s singular wrenching notes of steel guitar add urgency,; the song’s rhythm, volume and tempo ebbing and flowing, wrestling with its captors. Finally its binds are broken, free to accelerate to a crescendo of layered vocals and pounding drums, from which it suddenly fades into nothing; a dream, slipping into the ether. As you wake, cold sweating and staring into the black of your mind, the faint wisps spiral away.  Although you fail to grasp at the evanescing facts, this nightmare’s setting sticks in your mind as though you have known it all your life: “Land was so flat, could well have been ocean/No distinguishing feature in any direction.”

Comparisons to Cave are hardly rare for the music of The Triffids.  Born of the same temporal womb, post-punk and pre-grunge, Cave may be a chief proponent, but does not have proprietary over a gothic sound forged in London’s underbelly.  The Go-Betweens, Scientists, and Birthday Party, amongst others, found sanctuary and success in the British underground, and came away with a sound not dissimilar, evoking Australiana without falling into ocker patriotism and cliché.

From the opening beat and the whispered count, to the building melody and volume, ‘Wide Open Road’ offers a thankful shift in the album, a depart from the tenebrous huddle of preceding songs. Finally, the Triffids are fighting back, imploring us to ignore our loss, urging us onwards.  McComb is defiant, stirred by the unrequited love described within, embracing this pilgrimage and the country’s interior as an escape to future hope: “It’s a wide open road/and now you can go any place/that you want to go.” While its haunting flute, pounding drum arrangement and expansive composition gave ‘Wide Open Road’ mainstream acceptance, it is the simple, heartbreaking eloquence of McComb’s lyrics that give it such power: “So how do you think it feels/sleeping by yourself/when the one you love/is with someone else?” The song is an expression of Australia like few others – spacious, isolated and defiant to the end. 

Despite Born Sandy Devotional being recorded in London, it contains only Australia.  Only from such a distance is it possible to see the whole of this land, an esoteric understanding of the life it contains, and to fabricate a holistic representation of the true character of this hot, empty, secluded place. Through the musical landscape and imagery, The Triffid’s have created a uniquely Australian canvas, its themes of suicide, heartbreak and unrequited love direct metaphors for the loneliness and isolation of Australian life.  The few objective souls able to remove themselves from everyday existence understand the isolation inherent here, and are able to convey the importance of it to our identity; why we are at the same time friendly to strangers and wary of outsiders; intensely competitive yet supportive of the underdog.  It is up to these individuals to chronicle our history, and in a perfect world, it would be this art that describe us: the painting of Nolan and Arkley, the writing of Horne, Astley and Kennealy, and now, the music of The Triffids.