Posthumous album from Australian rock pioneers The Saints.
This marks the first new material released since Chris Bailey’s passing in 2022.
Fans of The Saints include Nick Cave, Bruce Springsteen, Warren Ellis, Queens Of The Stone Age, Robert Forster and many more.
Released on limited blue vinyl and CD with liner notes.
"In my opinion, The Saints were Australia’s greatest band… and Chris Bailey was my favourite singer" Nick Cave.
“One of the most sporadically brilliant, frustratingly uneven and most undeniably important bands Australia has ever produced” The Guardian
“Worshipped… a truly great band” NME
 
Long March Through the Jazz Age is the last album by Chris Bailey and The Saints. It’s a moving farewell - a testament to a restless, uncompromising artist who always moved forward, one of rock’s great lyricists and iconoclasts.
Recorded in late 2018 at Church Street Studios in Sydney, Bailey and longtime Saints drummer Pete Wilkinson flew in from Europe to reunite with guitarist/engineer Sean Carey, who had previously toured and recorded with the band. They were joined by Davey Lane (You Am I) on guitar, plus a handpicked ensemble of Sydney’s most exciting young horn, string and keyboard players. From Bailey’s rough demos, Long March Through the Jazz Age grew into a deeply human snapshot of modern times.
Empires (Sometimes We Fall) is the album’s anthemic opener, cast on a bedrock of western guitars punctuated by Bailey’s aching lyrics: “Sometimes we rise, sometimes we fall”. It’s the perfect set up for an album that swaggers with Bailey’s inherent punk spirit while flowing freely in a spacious production. A 12-string adds harmony and warmth to the string-laden Judas, it is a glorious melancholic piece, Gasoline smacks of the Stones country honking for Exile On Main Street, while Bruises is a candid recollection of how this celebrated troubadour got to where he did.
There are moments of Dylan-esque majesty as chiming guitars and strings widen the panoramic scale, while the title track carries a haunting, poetic intensity, its mournful trumpet break as spine-tingling as anything you'll hear. Long March Through the Jazz Age marks the end of Chris Bailey and The Saints’ remarkable journey - over four decades of music making and rule defying.

Label
Fire Records
Genre
Alternative LP - SIDE A
Empires (Sometimes We Fall)
Break Away
Judas
Vikings
Bruises
LP - SIDE B
Gasoline
The Key
Resurrection Day
Carnivore (Long March Through the Jazz Age)
Will You Still Be There

SOUTHBOUND