4 stars out of 5
by Shaun Carney - Australian Rolling Stone, September 1994 (issue #500
With Falling Swinger, his seventh solo album, Stephen Cummings has taken a sharp left turn in musical direction. Without doubt, the album, produced by Steve Kilbey, is a bold departure for the Melbourne singer. Kilbey appears to have viewed Cummings' talent as being something potentially lighter than air and has loosened the performer's moorings. This has enabled Cummings to drift upwards , into a world of soundscapes, transforming his approach to songs and singing and allowing him to finally shuck off the last discernible traces of his influences. Falling Swinger sees Cummings as a man liberated from his time and his age.
There are few of Cummings trademark pre-midlife crisis musings. Indeed on this album's penultimate cut, above a cloud of Kilbey inspired atmospherics, Cummings looks back: "I was so full of insecurities, I wanted to scream or shout/Hey, but what was there to worry about?" Sonically, too, the unadorned "traditional" soft-rock arrangements that characterised 1992's Unguided Tour - and conferred upon that album an occasional dreary worthiness - have been overlayed with a range of voice treatments, echo effects and mild electronics. Many songs conclude with little synthesised codas, added touches that underline Cummings' extra sense of adventure on Falling Swinger.
Although this album represents the shock of the new for Cummings, it also contains a whiff of the old-fashioned. It's varied, not based around any obvious singles, and thanks to the Kilbey-Cummings collaboration, carries a depth and sense of wholeness. There's even a move into the weird: Kilbey's "September 13" is a standard-issue Church song except that Cummings, not Kilbey, is doing the singing.
Cummings relies less on percussion and rhythm here than ever before and songs such as the near-formless "Sliding Across A Blue Highway" and "Wish the Show Was Over" rely on his narrative powers. The latter is probably the most unusual song Cummings has written, a near-spoken retelling of a frustrating conversation with his infirm mother that boasts an arrangement amply reflecting the tension inherent in intra-family conversations. Cummings has, during the past 10 years, made several truly great, if underappreciated, albums. This could well be his best.
by Jon Casimir - The Sydney Morning Herald, 1994
Excuse me while I go a bit overboard. Cutting to the chase, this is the best album Stephen Cummings has ever made. It's also the best local album of 1994. Falling Swinger is a drifting, dreamy travelogue, a collection of carefully realised, intoxicating visions.
Produced by the Church's Steve Kilbey, it displays a revitalised, refocused and realigned Cummings, bursting with creativity (it may also be the best album Kilbey has ever made).
Cummings sounds more relaxed and confident than ever, his breathy, slightly husky tones caressing the work of a group of musicians which includes long-time collaborator Shane O'Mara, Grant McLennan, Chris Abrahams, Kilbey, Bill McDonald and Tim Powell.
The 13 tracks range from the crystalline simplicity of What Was There To Worry About, God Knows and 100 Different Ways to full production numbers such as The Big Room and Sliding Across A Blue Highway.
Very much an album of understatement and gradual revelation, it keeps everything pretty much at mid-tempo, which allows a consistency of tone that, thanks to the imaginative instrumentation and atmospheric effects, never becomes dull.
Almost every song functions on more than one level, with sonic subtexts and undercurrents waiting to be discovered on repeated listenings. And isn't it nice these days to find an album that isn't exhausted of interest within a week?
The real success of the venture is that, in presenting the songwriting and singing of Cummings in a new light, it has expanded his strengths rather than abandoned them.
Previously, on albums such as Good Humour, his excursions took him out of sight of what has made Lovetown and A New Kind Of Blue important works in the mid '80s.
Here, the Cummings hallmarks are carefully integrated - thus, the sensual groove of As I Rise works effortlessly next to the more traditional piano base of Fell From A Great Height.
Even September 13, a Kilbey composition which sounds remarkably like a Church track, give or take the Miles Davis soundalike muted trumpet, sits perfectly in place. Early copies offer a free seven track live CD as well.
© Jon Casimir - reprinted with permission
by ??????? - Drum Media (Sydney), 1994
...a striking work of brooding atmosphere as stylistically diverse as anything recorded by Cummings but evoking a mood, an ambience that will surprise those who thought they had him pegged.
[anyone have the full review?]
by ??????? - Green Guide (The Age), 1994
Easily the most arresting album Cummings has recorded... hits you gloriously between the ears from the outset...
[anyone have the full review?]
4 1/2 stars out of 5
by ?Toby Creswell? - Juice magazine, 1994
...the tunes range from raw confessions to cooked commercial pop... sublime, Cummings at his best.
anyone have the full review?
by David Gilliver - from "Interpellator", CSU-Mitchell student newspaper.
The success of a Cummings album is predictable: it will be greeted with
critical praise and complete public indifference. 1990's Good Humour
made an attempt to overcome this by including a few respectable attempts at
dance music, but the solid sound of these songs upset the balance of the album
as a whole and it failed to sell. With his last effort, 1992's acoustic
Unguided Tour he simply refused to even attempt sounding commercial
(much of it was recorded live in the studio).
If that album was his music standing naked, then Falling Swinger is an
album all dressed up and ready to go places. Steve Kilbey of The Church has
taken charge of the production duties and the Cummings sound has never sounded
so strong or confident.
The opening track The Big Room is an excellent example of the extent of
these changes. The sound is unmistakeably big, driven by a rock solid beat, and
fleshed out by insistent backing vocals and chiming guitars within a dense
sonic backdrop. Over the top of it all, Cummings delivers his usual smooth and
impeccable vocals.
Whereas the quality of Unguided Tour was derived from its subtle beauty,
this album boasts both excellent production and thoughtful songwriting and
performances, a combination that results in several great songs. These include
the noble Fell From A Great Height (which Toni Childs has recently
recorded), the tension filled I Wish The Show Was Over and the
reflective mood of Days Chasing Days.
His traditional pop approach is not abandoned entirely. A number of songs are
exactly what one has come to expect from Cummings, but Kilbey has embellished
them with a variety of vocal effects and sounds, simultaneously enlarging the
sound and retaining its delicacy.
The new production style, although admirable, is potentially dangerous for the
idiosyncratic Cummings. It's great to hear Cummings pushing himself into new
musical areas, but in doing so he risks losing the sure ground he stood on when
rattling off his sometimes oblique lyrics. Part of his magic has always been
his ability to lull the listener into the type of song they'd grown to know and
love, while peppering it with odd and unsettling lyrics to make it distinctly
his own.
He does this most noticeably in White Noise, a piece of pop heaven if
ever I've heard it. The chorus is big and full of harmonies, the music
predictably solid and as the song closes Cummings decides to croon "let's take
a break for a television commercial" a few times. It's a sublime touch,
simultaneously absurd and stylish. One can't help think it would all fall flat
if the sound of the song wasn't so straightforward, but fortunately each track
on this album has been given the production that the material deserves.
Some songs here won't jump out at the listener, but in the context of the album
they are crucial inclusions (except perhaps the Kilbey-penned September
13). Although it is not quite the masterpiece that his past work has
promised, it's as close as any in the Cummings catalogue. With the bonus CD of
live-in-the-studio tracks, this is an exceptional purchase.
by Dino Scatena - "100 essential Australian Albums", Australian Rolling
Stone, September 1997 (issue #539)
After a series of solid solo albums following the break-up of the Sports in the
early 80's, Stephen Cummings joined forces with the Church's Steve Kilbey in
1994 to produce arguably his best work to date. The two Steves, it turned out,
had more in common than just a dry wit and a wicked turn of phrase: "September
13" - a Kilbey composition - is an oblique celebration of the pair's shared
birthday. From the opening track, the churning "Big Room", Falling
Swinger promised to sound nothing like any of Cummings' previous recordings.
One moment it sounded like the biggest thing you'd ever heard, the next it
could be as delicate as ice cream.
from "Culture Vulture" column in The Australian magazine, May 26-27 2001
Stephen Cummings' world-weary, after-hours persona finally found a sympathetic
collaborator in Steve Kilbey, who produced this critically exalted but popularly
ignored album. All too often the solo work of this former singer/songwriter
from '70s band The Sports had been unsatisfactory. Cummings himself was
apparently oblivious to what it was that made his sensibility so affecting.
Kilbey, the creative force behind The Church, who arranged and played on many
of these tracks, assembled a group of fine Australian musicians capable of
matching the radical shifts in mood, from the breathy sensuality of As I
Rise to an unbridled production like The Big Room - players sensitive
to Cummings's understatement. Each song is multilayered lyrically and
instrumentally, rewarding repeated listening. In an industry in which hitting
the youth demographic is valued above all verities, the category "adult-oriented
rock" tends to be applied as something of a pejorative. In that it transcends
the disposability of most chart pop, however, Falling Swinger really is
music made for adults.
Falling Swinger
Falling Swinger
Falling Swinger