Released 2012 | Producer Fortunato Luchresi | |
Recorded Trackdown Studios. Sydney, Australia. Label Highway 125 (Australia)Fire (UK; released with King of the Midnight Sun) |
King of the Sun is the fourteenth studio album released by Australian rock music group The Saints. Recorded in Sydney, Australia, the album is a concept album based on a journey home after a hundred-year war.
Contents
Critical reception
The album was met with mostly positive reviews from the Australian music press. Patrick Emery from Beat Magazine noted: "With only minor exception, it’s Bailey in his finest whimsical folk-blues guise. The title track has a whiff of literary pretension, its lyrics a set of seemingly non-sequitur statements built around a simple melody and Bailey’s disaffected vocals. Sweet Chariot is arguably the classic contemporary Saints style – a lumbering blues-based pop lick and an aesthetic that sits perfectly with Bailey’s modern day Lord Byron persona. Million Miles Away (La De Bloody Da) would, if attended to in a brutal punk manner, be one of the great garage rock tracks; here, it’s an intriguing acoustic track of surprising depth. "
Track listing
- "King of the Sun"
- "A Million Miles Away"
- "Sweet Chariot"
- "Turn"
- "Mystified"
- "Duty"
- "Road to Oblivion Part 2"
- "Craters on the Moon"
- "Mini Mantra Part 1"
- "Adventures in the Dark Arts of Watermelonery"
Bonus Disc "Songs from the Stash"
Also included in the 2012 CD release was a bonus disc called Songs from the Stash. These featured nine songs from the post Ed Kuepper period.
- "Just Like Fire Would" (from All Fools Day)
- "Last and Laughing Mile" (from Howling)
- "Massacre" (from Prodigal Son)
- "Photograph" (from A Little Madness to Be Free)
- "Ghost Ships" (from A Little Madness to Be Free and Prodigal Son)
- "Shipwreck" (from Prodigal Son)
- "Fall of an Empire" (from Everybody Knows the Monkey)
- "Something Wicked" (from Howling)
- "All Fools Day" (from All Fools Day)
'King of the Midnight Sun"
In 2014, the album was issued in some territories as a double; the second disc is the same track listing, but all songs have been re-recorded with guitarist Barrington Francis and drummer Peter Wilkinson, who did not appear on the original record.