Leadfinger: Friday night heroes, stories of (extra) ordinary Aussie-rock

After the great wave of visibility during the second half of the eighties, thanks to the record productions of groups such as Celibate Rifles, The Scientists, Midnight Oil, Died Pretty, Hoodoo Gurus, The Triffids, Moffs, The Stems, The New Christs, Hard- Ons, Beasts of Bourbon and many others, Australian rock has experienced years of partial oblivion, no longer being attractive to specialized critics, if not through a few die-hard Aussie-rock fans.

Yet in all these years there have been examples of productions including some historical formations of the first hour, such as the glorious Radio Birdman or The Saints; Nick Cave became a world-renowned artist; and there are many of the second wave that have held high the flag of kangaroo-land rock: waiting for a new wave, in the new millennium, today named after bands such as The Chats, RVG, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Primo! – all of them and former Stem’s Dom Mariani Datura 4 released really interesting records in recent weeks - aimed at consolidating the tradition of Australian rock, all maintaining their own identity and sound. 

Stewart  'Leadfinger' Cunningham whole career has developed in the middle age of modern Aussie rock, crossing throughout the nineties by playing in seminal formations such as Proton Energy Pills, Brother Brick, The Yes-Men, Challenger 7 and above all Asteroid B-612. All projects in which Cunningham has vented his youthful anger through the more classic hi-energy r’n’r which has its roots firmly linked to MC5 and the Stooges detroitian sound, with a particular regard to the songwriting of his fellow countrymen The Saints.

After the experience with Asteroid B-612 ended, Stewart Cunningham felt the need to form a new band that had a different sound, more suited to his feeling of the time. In an interview with the Australian site I-94 Bar, Cunningham explains that he had an idea of "I had this vague concept in my head that my next band would be super original sounding and every song would be in this alternate guitar tuning, mixing blues, slide and sonic riffs, heavy overdrive and feedback etc with melodic vocals…sounds good now when I think about it but the reality never panned out that way"(Edwin Garland, I-94 Bar, Nov. 2016).
The first Leadfinger formation with Steve O'Brien on drums and Wayne Stokes on bass clashed against some limits experienced during live shows which undermined the original idea so much, and eventually experimentation attempts towards a more classic rock sound led the way to different paths.

In 2007 the Spanish label Bang! Records offered to publish what actually were more than demos. Leadfinger's debut album "The Floating Life" must be considered a real solo album by its author and presents itself as an intimate and private painting that shows, even at its earliest stage, what soon will be revealed amongst the best songwritriting skills in Australian rock.
Starting from the beautiful cover picture, which reminds of Springsteen’s "Nebraska" but with a sight open on the infinite Australian landscape, you can feel the atmosphere of this album: intimate and personal, at times rarefied with occasional flashes of power pop. As Roberto Calabrò (this is his site) - great expert, friend and Aussie-rock lover) writes on i-94 Bar: "Many moods coexist in the weaving of the album: if the initial "Went Looking" - only for acoustic guitar and vocals - is the most personal one can expect, the splendid "Edge of Suburbia" is a delicate and intimate episode, with blues aromas. The celebration of solitude as a place of soul: "I got lost in suburbia / hanging out at the edge of the world / They can't find me here in suburbia ... / I'm at the end of the world".
In "Thin Lizzy" Stew takes up the electric six-string to give us another of his unbeatable power-pop fragments, this time dedicated to one of his youth idols: Phil Lynott. The romantic "Boo Radley" gives way to the rarefied and desert atmosphere of "Back in the Burgh", while "So In A Hurry" is an incredible ballad with psychedelic nuances. With "The Sydney Way?" Leadfinger gives a little bit of a speed to his album through a song revived by a rhythmic section and by the flicks of his guitar. "Bicycle Man" is an acoustic divertissement that sets the stage for the title track - "The Floating Life" - inspired by the work of the Australian poet John Forbes. And this too seems like a powerful statement from the bottom of the soul: "I wanted to survive, I wanted to get high / I wanted to invite / I wanted to incite, I wanted just enough / I wanted to depart / I wanted to imbibe / I wanted to survive. "
"The Philadelphia Ruse" opens in chinks of light with a splendid guitar phrasing, but it is the conclusive "The Music Had The Last Say" that gives us one of the most inspired moments of the album. An intense song, in its electro-acoustic delicacy, dedicated to the friend and companion of adventures Sean Greenway, who died prematurely in 2001.
Another precious piece of an intimate and splendid album ". Words to be fully subscribed.

If refined in the studio we would probably have a very different version of "The Floating Life" today, but the pressure from Bang! Records gave Leadfinger's career start in 2007, thanks to another opportunity just a year later when Cunningham and his partners were offered weekend free access to a recording studio located in an old farm on the southern coast of New South Wales. But before releasing the second album "The Rich Kids", the label Music Farmers of Wollongong, a suburb of Sydney and the base of Leadfinger, released "Trough The Cracks" 

a compilation of eight songs all showing the different sound souls in Leadfinger. Opened by "That Rock 'n' Roll Sound", an outtake of the Challenger 7 repertoire, a classic power pop forerunner, which is flanked by two songs taken from the first album "The Edge Of Suburbia" and "Bycicle Man", a wonderful cover of "Melt" by Some Lovers, the splendid "See You Tonight" that comes from the repertoire of Brother Brick, two new tracks "A Beautiful Sound" and "Makin Up Lost Time" which anticipate the future development of the band and the cover of a blues signed Slim Harpo "The Hipshake" which shows the roots common to every self-respecting rocker. 

December 2008 is the release date for "Rich Kids" and once again Leadfinger divides the two souls of the band into the eleven songs that make it up. On one hand the electric and sparkling soul – mostly declined in power pop episodes of "Rich Kids Can't Play Rock'n'Roll" and "Thin Lizzy On My Mind" with their killer refrains and melodies that are indelibly fixed in mind; on the other hand visionary ballads like "Show You I Care" and intimate songs full of poetry like "Northern Rivers Town" and "I Went Searching", nothing more than a new version of "I Went Looking" which opened "The Floating Life", showing unusual nuances  in this new full band version.

This record also represents the swan song of Leadfinger's first line-up, who performed in sporadic live shows, but also left an important mark regarding the work in the studio.
During the last months of 2008 Stewart Cunningham put together a new ensemble, giving a greater boost not only to live performances, but also to composition and songwriting, even though writing most of the tracks himself.

Michael Boyle on guitar, Dillon Hicks on drums and Adam 'Reggie' Screen on bass enter the new Leadfinger line-up, which becomes a quartet. The next recording step is the album "We Make The Music", released by Impedance Records in Brisbane as a result of a studio work during which the new members of the band had to immerse themselves in a new situation, since none of them except Stew had previously worked in a recording studio. Despite this situation, listening to the album, the band gets along and appears strongly focused on the evolving Leadfinger sound, which becomes more and more rock and capable of ranging in all the subgenres without being afraid of use acoustic instruments such as banjo, mandolin, dobro or mix different sounds. It is clear that Cunningham pursues a vital need, because it is no longer the time of youthful anger, screaming into the microphone and being overwhelmed by powerful sounds fired at high volumes through amplifiers.

The blues also appears in this album in clear passages, both by being declared from the very first title - such as "Eucalyptus Blues" -  or less emphasized as in "Anthem For Unimpressed". Cunningham shows more and more his capability as a great songwriter either when he indulges in the youthful memories of "Forteen" or when he examines his deep self in songs like "No Reflection". Of course, the trademark is not missing in songs, with an extremely power pop flavor such as the title track or that refer to its past ("The Price You Pay"). Yet the whole album offers interesting ideas and shows a cohese band ecperience which is growing and clearly ready to give the best in the years to come.

Before the end of the year, Leadfinger released in digital version a new EP called "I Belong To The Band", consisting of six songs that alternate originals and covers and pay homage to many artists who influenced the whole band, now appearing as not only made by excellent musicians, but also great rock fans. This album opens with "What Did You See In Me?", containing clear references to the '70s Stones but also winking to the Kiss. "Can't Hardly Wait" is a song written by Paul Westerberg of Replacements, one of Cunningham's many sources of inspiration. "December Runaway" is a ballad with a killer melody, followed by a tribute to Rory Gallagher, from whose repertoire Leadfinger take "Tattoo'd Lady", transforming it into a classic Aussie-rock song, while the "Leadfinger Theme" is pure Detroit sound at its very best. The closure is left to a Rev Gary Davies classic: "I Belong To The Band" is of course an act of faith to the new Leadfinger reality that will come to the present day.

The EP will also be printed in just 100 physical copies, which were naturally sold out in the blink of an eye at the merchandising banquet during the 2012 gigs.

It is time for the Leadfinger name to reach a status of cult band beyond the borders of Australia and it is inevitable for the band’s history to get in the way of the record label that more than any other has contributed to writing history of Australian rock: John Needham's Citadel. In the winter of 2012 the group entered Def Wolf Studios in Sydney record the tracks which will make up "No Room At The Inn". Despite a budget of only 3,000 Australian dollars, which restrained them in completing part of the album in Stew's home studio (Leadfinger's Rendezvous Studio), the quartet lives up to the mission of recording new tracks, better or at least different than the previous ones, perfectioning the songwriting and trying to become better musicians without ever losing the fun aspect that emerges in their live exibitions. Leadfinger do not get stuck on previous themes and sounds, trying to go ahead and look to the future with optimism. The result is,to say the least, magnificent: and from a writing point of view one of the absolute top of Stewart's 'Leadfinger' Cunningham career.

The album opens with "You're So Strange",  a mid-tempo ballad in crescendo enhanced by the second voice of Chloe West, a song that could remember the Rolling Stones in the "Let it Bleed" period, but which clearly shows Cunningham’s personality as a whole. The next song "It's Much Better" is a classic high energy track, immediately followed by "Gimme The Future". This track in particular is supported by the solid rhythmic section of Dillon and Reggie, while the guitars of Stew and Michael duel and support each other as do the two voices – Chloe’s more discreet and slightly hidden, and Cunningham’s, more and more mature. For the purists of Australian sound there is "Cruel City", one of the leading tracks and a real anthem of the band. 

At this point, after a poker of songs like that, you could already deliver "No Room At The Inn" to glory, but the group express itself through "Lonely Road": another crescendo ballad, with Boyle's guitar that brings out spectacular riffs. A classic rock song destined to put Cunningham’s name in the Olympus of the greatest composers of Australian rock and beyond. "The Wandering Man", "Pretty Thing" and the final "Don't Think Twice" are songs destined to be appreciated in radio airplay, capable of bringing out all the clear and hidden references that influenced the Sydney quartet: Flamin Groovies, the Blues, MC5, Sonic Rendezvous Band, The Saints, New York Punk, Replacements and Big Star. In addition to many obscure or even mainstream things like Springsteen, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones. The whole world of rock that we love most. 

"The Other Ones" is, next to "Lonely Road", a track which  adds layers of personality to a record that you can never get tired of listening to even today, almost ten years after. The third chapter of the instrumental "Segue" prepares the way for the title track, a mix of acoustic and electric sounds where banjo and guitars surround the listener in a pleasant circular motion.

Before the release of "No Room At The Inn" in February 2013, the band prepared a new self-produced EP in the usual 100 copies to be sold at concerts and which represents a sort of anticipation of the new album.

"Ripped Genes & Analogue Dreams" is opened by "Pretty Things", song written in the style of "There She Goes" by The La's, which is flanked by three other songs that will not find space on the Citadel album: "Poor Man's Boogie", "Indian" and "Left Wing Yule" are power-pop / rock'n'roll songs that engage political social reflections in the Leadfinger themes and pay homage in style to bands and soloists such as Flamin Groovies, The Replacements, Danny and the Champs, Tom Petty and The Smithereens! There’s also room for covers: "All The Action" written by Flamin Groovies' ex frontman Chris Wilson as a follow-up to his classic "Same Some Action", "Laser Love" by Marc Bolan's T. Rex and "Behind The Wall Of Sleep" ”Of the Smithereens. The Ep is now available on the band's Bandcamp, in full version while on the official website in digital version it is reduced to five tracks.

The years following No Room At The Inn's release pass quietly with few concerts and a lot of work in the composition phase. All four members of the band do different jobs and meet on weekends to try out new songs for a new album, or to hold some concerts for Australian audiences. A situation that could have disrupted the band very easily, but this did not happen due to the strong bond established between them. In the second half of 2015, they entered the Linear Recording Studio (Leichardt, NSW) to give birth to a new album that will be released the following summer by the Conquest Of Noise.

Cunningham's songwriting, faithful to his ethics of progressing day after day and record after record, gets to a new maturity level especially from the lyrical point of view. Unlike the usual Stew does not adapt previously written lyrics to the music in the rehearsal room or study, but he writes them at the same time with the music letting himself be totally involved until obtaining a fully satisfactory result. Another different feature compared to previous works is represented, as pointed out by several members of the Australian specialized press, by the fact that some songs have a lyrically Australian colloquial trait, they capture their jargon but not in a parodic sense. Perhaps a trait that is difficult for us Europeans to find in Leadfinger's songs as the universal language of rock.

In the months before entering the studio to record "Friday Night Heroes", the band had plenty of time to refine this new approach to song composition and finishing, despite having to face a difficult times like Stewart Cunningham's mother health issurs, who not only slowed down work but led to serious health problems as he told in an interview: "My mum was sick and I was told she didn’t have long to live about a month before we started recording…it’s a pretty confronting thing to hear and hard to take on board but we had spent the previous 18 months working on these songs and the session was booked, deposit paid so I went ahead with it thinking/hoping we would finish it before she went so I would have time to spend with her…alas it wasn’t meant to be". And he goes on to say: “In the end she went really quickly which I suppose was a blessing for her but took myself and the rest of the family by surprise, it was a conflicted time – trying to play guitar and sing and think about this music we were in the middle of making and being grief-stricken about my mum. I couldn’t sleep because of the grief and ended up getting a serious chest infection, I was lying in bed at night and I sounded like a dying old man, my chest was wheezing and I could only sleep on one side…so by the time it came to do the vocals I was so sick I was unable to sing. I thought it would heal itself but it got worse and worse. I couldn’t do the vocals for about a month and even then I was struggling to get back to where I was before the session started when I felt really confident. I ended up doing the vocals at a good friend’s home studio in Wollongong once I got better, looking back now, the way the band and everyone involved in the record pulled together to get it done was pretty special, it could easily have not been finished. Does that describe how I felt…maybe a little, maybe it’s impossible to describe all that going on in your life, you just get through it somehow…fuck, how did I get through that time? I don’t look back on making the album with anything but positive thoughts either which is strange… I guess making the album was a distraction and an emotional outlet that kept me together". (Edwin Garland, I-94 Bar, Nov. 2016).

Despite all these difficulties, "Friday Night Heroes" is a great album, without any drop in tone, as cohesive as the previous one and with a quality of the songs in some cases of a higher level. The opening is "Champagne & Diamonds", a wildly electric piece that seems to have taken on the weight of the golden season of Australian rock in the mid-eighties. "Heart On My Sleeve" is pure "Leadfiger style", that is, the updating of the Brother Brick / Asteroid B-612 / Challenger 7 experience in old age, also enhanced by Doug Hazell's sax and the keyboard lines played from the cameo of Andy Newman (The Visitors / Decline of the Reptiles). "Mean Streak" has the unmistakable touch of Stew's guitar and is also supported by the backing vocals of Leah Flanagan, another illustrious guest in the studio. As always The ballads on Leadfinger discs make the difference. Even "Bite My Toungue" does not escape giving added value to the disc, supported by the piano guidelines and with the guitar by Micheal Boyle who tracks discreet solos. The passage talks about how difficult it is to find the right way to affirm one's self in front of people who know how to analyze each situation, only through their degree of final judgment. And in front of people who have the truth in their pockets, you have to bite your tongue to find the right way to dismantle their beliefs. 

Side A closes with the painful "Raining In The Dark" a song that tells the end of a love story played and sung with a poignant aching soul surrendered to the inevitable farewell of the partner: "Our love is dead and now / She has to cry alone". "Older and Wiser" opens the b side energetically and shows the compactness of a perfectly run-in and cohesive band, in the full of its maturity, as highlighted also by the subsequent "The Man I Used To Be" opened by sparkling jangle guitars and which will also be released as the b-side of the single "Cheer Squad" guiltyly kept off the album. "Friday Night Heroes" is once again a great autobiographical ballad about being a Friday night star: working-class heroes seeking redemption after the classic working week. "Aprreciate" is one of the most catchy songs on the disc, a classic power pop played on acoustic registers and which pairs with the final song "My Own Road", a very Springsteen style song that lightly deals with imminence and appearance sudden, but also ordinary, of death, the main theme of an album that celebrates the daily nature of pain and death, but at the same time glorifies life.

As mentioned above, it remains out of the album "Cheer Squad" which in my opinion represents one of Leadfinger's anthem: a power-pop jangle to sing at the top of your voice that sublime represents a perfect synthesis of all that Australian rock has produced from the seventies to these days.

After promoting the album with a full tour in major Australian cities, Leadfinger landed for the first time in Europe, with a tour of fourteen dates in 2017, however limited to the countries of Spain, France and Switzerland.

Just during the Spanish dates, Leadfinger during a day-off, decided to record the EP "La Banda En España En Technicolor" live in the studio, which includes some tracks from the previous albums (Cruel City, Fourteen and We Make the Music ), two covers: "You Wear It Well" (Rod Stewart) and "Baby, Lets Twist" (The Dictators), to which is added "Edge A Little Closer" written by Cunningham for the Asteroid B-612. 

The EP remains unpublished until November 2019, date of the release both in physical and in a digital version, through the band’s official channel. During this time the band's activity had to be interrupted due to the health problems that affected Cunningham, who had to undergo demanding treatments that brought him on the road to recovery, but severely limited his musical activity.

While waiting for Leadfinger's musical history to resume with unchanged pace, all that remains is to listen to the records of one of the bands that have best been able to carry on the tradition of Australian rock, of Australian sound.

Leadfinger's official website

Leadfinger on Bandcamp

Leadsinger's YouTube channel