Cold Chisel Circus Animals

It would’ve been easy for Cold Chisel to build on the pop-rock success of 1980’s East. But with their 1982 follow-up Circus Animals, the group did an about-face, making ** a record that was at times aggressive (“You Got Nothing I Want”) and quasi-experimental (“Taipan”, “Numbers Fall” and “Letter to Alan”, a tribute to former roadie Alan Dallow, who passed away in a car accident). At the time, Australian rock groups such as Men At Work and INXS were receiving international attention. Chisel, however, were so angered by the lack of support from their US record label while promoting ** the more instantly palatable ** East that the experience inspired the title of this album—a reference to how the band felt in America when required to perform and parade for an industry that didn’t care for them—and its biting opening track, “You Got Nothing I Want”.
Keyboardist and songwriter Don Walker may have spearheaded the commercial appeal of East, but here he contributes the record’s most surprisingly complex songs, including “Houndog”, “Numbers Fall” and “Wild Colonial Boy”, a hostile, anti-corporation screed informed ** by the anonymous 19th-century ballad of the same name. (“And when they shaft my brother dear and pay him off with lies/I fill my hand with the union card and aim between their eyes,” snarls frontman Jimmy Barnes.) Drummer Steve Prestwich wrote two of the album’s most approachable ** moments in “When the War Is Over” and the reggae-tinged “Forever Now”, the album’s biggest hit, while Ian Moss’ “Bow River”—named after a small outpost between Kununurra and Halls Creek in Western Australia where his brother Peter worked at a sheep station—went on to become a staple of the band’s live set.