Cold Chisel No Plans (2012).rar

Single .zip file, unzips to 13 tracks in mp3, 320kbps.

THAT Don Walker is one of this country's best songwriters is simple fact.

All For You, the first single from Cold Chisel's seventh studio album (in almost 40 years!), is on the long list for this year's APRA song of the year with good reason. It's a loping, easy ballad that, as Walker always manages to do, evokes so much with such apparent economy.

Like several of the tracks on No Plans it speaks of redemption; of a man's ability to make something of himself through love.

It's also one of a handful of songs featuring the familiar drumming of Steve Prestwich, recorded just months before the 56-year-old's death from a brain tumour last year. It's testament to Walker's lyrical sensibility that by the time Prestwich's first crack of the snare introduces the second verse, the narrative has been set up.
Rec Coverage 28 Day pass

Singer Jimmy Barnes here and elsewhere uses the smoother part of his range, though diehard fans need not worry on this count: the album's first notes consist of a Barnes vocal intro of such serrated intensity that the listener is left in no doubt, as Walker drily observed, that it's a new record by that band.

Second single Everybody is a New Orleans style shuffle with Prestwich's replacement, Charley Drayton, absolutely nailing the groove. Dead and Laid to Rest, a powerful soul number written by Barnes, hits the mark and is followed by something of a stylistic departure in Missing a Girl.

The band's members were so happy with this one after its early demo recording that they left it as is: an understated bassline, rimshot drums, piano and acoustic guitar, and Barnes singing, again at that sweeter, unforced point in his voice.

Guitarist Ian Moss contributes one song of his own, the up-tempo Too Late, though he also sings on another of Walker's, Summer Moon, a rock blues reprising the familiar Chisel theme of long hours spent on the road.

The bittersweet finale is Prestwich singing and playing on his own I Got Things to Do, with a vocal track the other band members did not know existed until after his death. The irony of its subject is obvious ("give me way more time to spend with you /honey now when you're gone you're gone too long") and the duelling solos mid-song from Walker and Moss are exquisite.

LABEL: Warner
RATING: 4 ½ stars