Don Walker has spent more than five decades turning characters, landscapes, relationships and fragments of Australian life into songs. As the principal songwriter of Cold Chisel, he wrote some of the band’s defining songs, while his solo work has allowed him to pursue a broader and often more intimate songwriting path.
His new album, Love Songs, is his fifth solo studio album and follows 2023’s Lightning In A Clear Blue Sky. Rather than presenting a collection written at one particular moment, Love Songs gathers songs from different periods of Walker’s writing life, including material recorded as far back as the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The nine-track album moves from the brass-driven opening of “Let’s All Get Together” through the country storytelling of “Breakfast In Paris”, the reflective “Deeper Light”, the aching “Luck” and “Fly Away”, the intimate “Could You Still Be Here”, the melodic “The Girl I Used To Know”, “It Will Always Be You” and the 14-minute narrative epic “Darwin”.
In this Noise11 interview, Don Walker takes Paul Cashmere through every song on Love Songs, explaining where the material came from and how some of the recordings evolved. He also discusses his collaborations with Slim Dusty, the long-buried Freedom soundtrack project featuring Michael Hutchence, and the attempt to turn his solo song “You’ve Got To Move” into a Cold Chisel track inspired by the irresistible rhythm of the B-52s’ “Love Shack”.
Stay updated with your free Noise11.com daily music news email alert. Subscribe to Noise11 Music News here
Be the first to see NOISE11.com’s newest interviews and special features on YouTube. See things first—Subscribe to Noise11 on YouTube
Follow Noise11.com on social media:
Bluesky
Facebook – Comment on the news of the day
