"You Can Really Feel The Strength Of The Legacy And The Way It's Resonated With People"

It's been nearly 25 years since Melbourne folk-poppers Things Of Stone & Wood released their acclaimed 1993 debut album The Yearning, the record that catapulted the young four-piece to national fame almost overnight.

While these days the album is probably best remembered for ARIA-winning lead single Share This Wine and its smash hit follow-up Happy Birthday Helen - the song written for frontman Greg Arnold's girlfriend (now wife), which somehow tapped into the national psyche — there's much more than just those songs to The Yearning as a document.

"We laboured on that album, in a really loving way." 

Rife with familiar Melbourne imagery, the album's deft lyrics also touched upon social issues such as racism, Indigenous culture, urban decay and the potential advent of war — topics that still resonate loudly today — all couched in interesting arrangements and perfectly hummable melodies.

On the eve of a reunion that finds them playing The Yearning in full for the first time, Arnold looks back fondly on this powerful opening gambit. "Obviously the history of the record — like so many records — is attached to its most prominent singles, but to us the album itself always had this thing about it," he reflects. "At the time you could really tell that amongst listeners: they sort of really, really responded to the whole thing. Everyone's personal favourites aren't necessarily those big singles — often the singles are an invitation into the record. A song like In Our Home is unlikely to ever be a big-release single but to me that was a really big song on that album.

"We laboured on that album, in a really loving way. We put a lot of time into it, we'd be going out on tour and coming back and working on another track. And there were a lot of EPs as well — the Happy Birthday Helen EP [1992] held a lot of songs that I sometimes forget weren't on The Yearning. But The Yearning tells its own little story from start to finish and, while it's not a concept album, it is an album that has this journey across the record which really makes sense unto itself. We took a lot of time over that and really cared about it."

Hindsight has also made Arnold justifiably proud of Things Of Stone & Wood's legacy as a whole. "I'm very proud and also very happy to see the way that it seems to have resonated," he smiles. "You have a time after you've stopped touring and things like that where you're sort of wondering where everything's at and how your work is being viewed, and I suppose we've had this lovely time over the last few years where you can really feel the strength of the legacy and the way it's resonated with people, and obviously for a long time now. It's so great, we couldn't be happier."