Wea International
1982
Circus Animals
About This Album
Cold Chisel opened the '80s with their most widely accepted and artfully constructed album, East. Following it up was a tall order for the Aussie quintet, but they did the trick admirably with Circus Animals. (A live album, Swingshift, was released in the period between the two studio discs.) A ten-song stew of the band's signature guitar-and-piano-driven ballads and rockers, it further confirmed Chisel's depth and breadth as a creative unit. From the outset of Circus Animals, the boys come crashing in through the window like a bunch of rowdies with hell-raising on their minds, cranking out the guitar rock rottweiler "You Got Nothing I Want." Singer Jimmy Barnes' wrote the song about the frustration of a recently completed U.S. tour that had imploded ingloriously. As he belts out the number, Barnes' voice sounds like a buzz saw blade that's flown loose and ripped through a bunch of parked cars. Guitar star Ian Moss takes over the lead vocals for the second track, the up-tempo jangler-c*m-thumper "Bow River," which tells a typical Chisel tale of a working-class battler who dreams of better things: "I don't want to see another engine line/Too many years and I owe my mind/First set o' wheels headin' back Bow River again/The first thing you know I'll be back in Bow River again.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,6 and 9)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.