Loyal Atko
As if on cue, Anthony Atkinson offers a wistful tale of political nostalgia – future “dream team” be damned. In an unlikely and surely unprecedented move, romanticism and ALP politics are entwined in song form by the one-time Mabel. “Keating came on the radio,” Atkinson sings in the first line.
And I heard your mother sigh and joke
It’s all in the bag the bleeding hearts are back
This shuffling pop song continues from here, Atkinson bemoaning the perceived decline of the ALP. We get a search for the light on the hill, noteworthy speeches, rage and agitating types. Meanwhile the band, containing members of The Lucksmiths and Mid State Orange, plays on, mixing an alt.country melancholy with Atkinson’s signature pop smarts.
- Anthony Atkinson
- Bleeding Hearts Are Back
- from Loyalty Songs
“Where’s the reassuring word for the branch members dismayed,” Atkinson sings in a particularly inspiring finger-pointing, apparatchik-despising moment. (It’s worth wondering if branch members would be dismayed given that most of them seem to be spectral presences with inordinate strategic importance. But perhaps I’m being too cynical.) The song’s a summation of Atkinson’s apparent aim on his new record, Loyalty Songs: stretching his parochial narratives beyond the bedroom, kitchen and Fitzroy Gardens; encompassing tales of lives beyond the familiar Candle milieu.
For all its topicality, “Bleeding Hearts are Back” isn’t the best song on the album. That honour goes to “What the Answer’s Under,” a bittersweet track that mixes Candle favourites The Lucksmiths with one-album-wonders The Small Knives.
- Anthony Atkinson
- What the Answers Under
- from Loyalty Songs