TRACK-BY-TRACK: COUSIN TONY’S BRAND NEW FIREBIRD TAKE US THROUGH 'ROSEWATER CROCODILE'

Rosewater Crocodile is out now!

Image: Supplied.

Melbourne indie group Cousin Tony’s New Firebird have dropped their fourth studio album, Rosewater Crocodile. To celebrate, the band are taking us through the collection of songs track-by-track.

“The more songs I write, and the more we bring them to life as a band, the more we learn to let go," band member Lachlan Rose shares. "David Lynch described the process of creativity as sinking. Below the ripples and the waves lies a dark ocean of ideas (or fish). The longer you train yourself to sink down there, the bigger and the stranger and the more dangerous the creatures become. The rosewater crocodile was what I found down there. It’s a world of exotic jungles, singing ghosts, recalcitrant fairies, dream bears and winding rivers that fizz with iridescent, oily bubbles. Or as our producer Josh Barber described it - ‘a magic album about magic.’”

Cousin Tony’s New Firebird will hit the road on a national tour, kicking off in Melbourne on July 25. The run of show will continue on to Adelaide and Sydney, before wrapping up Brisbane on August 12.

ROSEWATER

An invitation to a cruise down a bubbling river of rosewater. The banks are rustling with shadows and strange flutes and nothing is quite what it seems. Keep your limbs inside the boat at all times.

SKY!

All the great cities of the world are sinking down into the fizzing, iridescent ocean. We take one last look at the sky, howling our swan song as we submit to the abyss.

MERCURY RISING

A sexy and raucous celebration of love, lust and the rising temperature that results from the friction.

JANE BEAR

An ode to a treasured friend who, though no longer with us, still roams the jungle in dreams. She’s the mother with the claw that pours the honey in the medicine. On a musical level, this song owes much to Phil Collins’ original soundtrack to Disney’s Tarzan.

MY GHOST & IT'S CRAWLING

The ghosts of our memory live inside the crawl spaces of our hearts. This is a song of leaving and the pain of having to.

FAIRY KING

An ode to the mysteries of the garden, and the spirited glints from raindrops, refracting from the leaf’s edge. In some songs, we’re trying to create a place more than we are a story.

FLEE THE CAGE

A wrestle between the freedom and the confinement that comes from loving someone, and the bravery it takes to leave. Piano-wise, I was listening to a lot of Bruce Hornesby and it also features a bridge sung by the entire band sans-Lachy. Watching that happen was one of the highlights of the album.

FREAK OF NATURE

A celebration of the Frankenstein-esque mosaic of a being that two people create over many years of loving one another. Gloriously imperfect and beautifully monstrous. We are a freak of nature; a creature made of dreams and failures.

MANGO SEASON

The surreal feeling of hopelessness whilst being in an aesthetically beautiful situation. Even on a blue-bird day at the beach, the blues can still find a way through the cracks.

REST

Another ode to a lost friend. We wrote this song as an aide to their passing.

CROCODILE

That was the river, this is the sea. A song of departure, a song of arrival and a song of becoming. A farewell to all the lurking predators, friendly beasts and oozing habitats we met along the way of making this album. As the album comes to an end, we finally sink down to the ocean floor and leave the iridescent surface of Rosewater Crocodile with one resonating truth in our minds - loving you, nothing could be easier.

Rosewater Crocodile is out now!