Tully - Sea Of Joy LP
Following on from 2010 live album Live At Sydney Town Hall 1969-70, Chapter can now begin reissuing Sydney folk-psych icons Tully's three acclaimed studio albums, starting with solemn, dreamy 1971 surf soundtrack Sea Of Joy. Sea Of Joy documents a period of massive change of the band. For the previous two years, they had been arguably Australia's most dynamic rock group, renowned for their wild, largely improvised concerts. Then showstopping drummer Robert Taylor departed the band, swiftly followed by vocalist Terry Wilson, and the remainder of Tully joined forces with members of gentle, exploratory folk group Extradition. Suddenly Tully were rockers no longer. Approached by surfing director Paul Witzig to record the soundtrack to his next film when Tully were a towering rock band, by the time Sea Of Joy came to be recorded Tully were a drummer-less, contemplative folk-psych outfit, dedicated to spiritual guru Meher Baba. The results were luminous. Sea Of Joy radiates a serene purity, miles removed from what people generally think of as surf music, but as Witzig wrote on the back cover, "Tully are not surfers, but there proved to be many things common to both our worlds: a feeling for peace, beauty, simplicity and freedom." Humble, disarming and sublime, Sea Of Joy is a record like very few others in the Australian rock canon.