A positive review of the new Mark Seymour and The Undertow album, The Boxer.

Author:  Jeff Jenkins, Rhythms Magazine.

Date: 3 March 2024.

Original URL: https://issuu.com/rhythms10/docs/rhythms_magazine_march-april_2024_digital

Article Text

Mark Seymour & The Undertow
The Boxer
Bloodlines
4 Stars

A knockout

Mark Seymour steps back into the ring to deliver one of the finest albums of his career.

“Rhythm is everything in boxing. Every move you make starts with your heart” – Sugar Ray Robinson.

The last time I saw Michael Gudinski was at a Mark Seymour gig. But it wasn’t your typical sweaty pub, where you’d usually find Seymour and his label boss. Instead, it was in front of a city restaurant on a Saturday afternoon.

To rejuvenate Melbourne’s CBD, battered by Covid, Gudinski had organised a series of “pop-up” concerts. You could see the look of surprise on people’s faces as they looked up from their lattes and saw a guy with a guitar. “Hey, isn’t that Mark Seymour?”

The mushroom founder, who was wearing a dirty old band T-shirt, stood on the street, arms folded, proudly smiling as he surveyed the scene, knowing that an artist he’d worked with four decades was bringing some joy to a city he loved.

I mentioned to Gudinski how much I was enjoyed Seymour’s Slow Dawn album. “Yeah,” the music mogul agreed in his gruff voice, “he’s one of the greats.”

Three years later, Mark Seymour & The Undertow have delivered The Boxer, the follow-up to Slow Dawn. At a time when some of Seymour’s contemporaries have seemingly given up on making new music, he’s still punching. In this era of Spotify – where many critics are saying the album is dead – it would be easy to throw in the towel and say, as Roberto Duran did, “no mas”.

But Seymour is still striving to make great art. He still believers.

“A fight for perfection” – Mike Tyson
“Do you achieve it?” – Charlie Rose, interview
“Nah. No one does. But we aim for it.”

If you just scanned the titles of the first three songs here, you might think this is an angry rock record: ‘The Boxer’, ‘All My Rage’, ‘She Burned Her Bridges Down’.

Life can hit you pretty hard. But Seymour has somehow absorbed the blows and is still moving forward. As Jack Dempsey observed, “A champion is someone who gets up when they can’t.”

Ultimately, The Boxer is a fight for love. “Boxing taught me how to let go of anger and find self-respect,” Seymour explains.

“There are no angry songs on this record.”

“I’ve been running in the dark for too long,” he sings. “And all my rage will soon by gone.”

If you’ve ever seen Seymour on stage, you could easily mistake him for a boxer. A wiry welterweight. But he actually didn’t take up boxing until Covid lockdoww. The sport taught him a few things about himself. “I started boxing for one set of reasons,” he admits, “then discovered the real one later.

“Exercise turned to psychology: is your opponent controlling you, or are you doing it to yourself?”

One of boxing’s greatest quotes came from perhaps the sport’s most polarising figure, Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Seymour’s vision has been brilliantly brought to life by producer Cameron McKenzie, the guitarist in The Undertow, Seymour’s band that also features John Favaro on bass, and Peter Maslen on drums, with Cameron Bruce on keyboards, and Eva Seymour on backing vocals.

Though it’s the most “musical” album of Seymour’s career, not a note seems out of place. The Undertow are a band that adeptly serves the song, showing that sometimes it’s the subtleties and the things left unsaid that give a song its power.

While listening to the record, I thought back to that gig in the city. As Seymour followed a Hunters & Collectors classic with a song from Slow Dawn, I looked over to Gudinski. His smile said it all. He looked like a proud dad, even though he was just four years  older than the singer.

It was as if he was saying: yep, this guy is a legend – he’s a part of our culture – but you know what, his new stuff is just as good.

And he was right. The Boxer is an album that hits hard, though its power is in the gentle pull of The Undertow.

Hunters & Collectors was a massive machine. They called it “The Great Aussie Tug”, a reference to the roaring backbeat necessary in a pub environment. And in ‘Waiting On The Kid’, this album’s showstopping dued with Linda Bill, Seymour sings, “I’ve been guilty of coming on too strong.”

But with The Boxer, Mark Seymour is no longer afraid to show his sensitive side.

It’s an instant classic.

The Boxer is released April 19 on Bloodlines.

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