Thunder, Wind And Existentialism

Aussie rock icon Tex Perkins assembled The Dark Horses in the mid-'90s as a backing band to fulfill a contractual obligation, but over time the project has defiantly taken on its own life and is now six albums deep into its own fascinating journey. Featuring an all-star cast of guitarists Charlie Owen, Joel Silbersher and Murray Patterson plus Gus Agars on drums and Steve Hadley on bass, their new album, Tunnel At The End Of The Light, is a mildly conceptual collection that constitutes the band's most assured offering to date.  

 

"I've always wanted to present an album in the classic early-'70s concept album form — in prog rock style for want of a better term — where one track leads into the other and it's all connected somehow," Perkins explains. "I guess the thematic thread through it is pretty loose, but by having environmental sounds and elemental sounds like thunder and wind bookending the album it does bind it all together. On [the self-titled] Dark Horses album that we did in 2010 — after seven years of not doing music together — that album was just a bunch of songs thrown together, songs that had accumulated over a long period of time: that was their connection. I guess in blueprints of albums that was like a White Album or a London Calling, where there's a whole lot of songs that don't really sound the same. But this one is more like Dark Side Of The Moon. This is one for the headphones.

 

"These last three Dark Horses albums, the first one was just about getting back together with a bunch of songs and recording them, and the next one [2012's Everyone's Alone] we recorded 12 months later and the idea with that was to make an album quickly while we were freshly warmed up, and this one I guess is all the lessons learned from those two experiences."

 

The lyrical thread on Tunnel At The End Of The Light is full of questions, veering towards the existential end of the analytical spectrum.

 

"Always! Existentialism is my middle name," Perkins laughs. "Existentialism basically just asks, 'Why do we bother?' and a lot of religions try to tell you the meaning of things, and my existentialism says, 'Why do you need a meaning? Why do you need a purpose? Life's good!' Sometimes there's bleak existentialism and sometimes there's optimistic existentialism — there is no point! Great! I'm glad there's no point or meaning to life. The point is to live, and get from one end to the other and try not to hurt yourself along the way. Probably the bleakest existential sentiment is our cover of They Shoot Horses Don't They, which is a song by a 'one-hit wonders' band from the '70s called Racing Cars. The title comes from a movie and I guess from a book before that, but it means that even horses have a way out but we're stuck here with our suffering."