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koori

  • luke and vicLuke Peacock and Vic Simms.

    Conceived by Luke Peacock of Robert Forster-produced Brisbane outfit Halfway, The Painted Ladies are a black and white supergroup brought together to celebrate and reinterprete the classic 1972 live-in-prison LP "The Loner" by Koorie country iconoclast Vic Simms.

    The band released the fabulous album "Play Selections from The Loner" in 2014. Produced by longtime Simms spruiker Rusty Hopkinson of You Am I, the album revealed a fabulous and rootsy rockin’ combo and an all-killer set of songs, highlighted by the unabashed all-Australian classics "Get Back Into the Shadows" and "Stranger in My Country".

    Both are depictions of a young black man’s life experience that remain both lyically potent and musically thrilling. In the Painted Ladies’ hands the former became a hard-driving pop-soul rocker, and the latter a sullen and beautiful, six-minute moan of alienation and anguish that builds to the sort of electrical storm that your average Died Pretty or New Christs fan should identify with. (And yes, I’m talking to YOU!)