I feel like I’ve come to the end of that chapter where I’ve learned a bunch of lessons and I’ve been shown a bunch of things spiritually.” “Life feels strong and solid for me now… and this record is in a different space. And if Spirit Bird signalled the beginning of his spiritual self-awakening, Storm Boy arrives at the conclusion. “It’s definitely a theme on the record,” agrees Rudd.
Storm Boy tracks the last five or six years of his journey, his “awakening” and of all the things that “have made sense” along the way. Six years have passed since Rudd’s last solo release, Spirit Bird, and a lot of things have happened in that time. It’s a line where Rudd’s spirituality really comes to the fore: “Kookaburra calls just like he knows / And I call a ride back yes I’m home / He’s been with me he’s watched me grow / Through those rainy days and those rocky roads.” One specific moment seems to sum up the record for Rudd, an album which he describes as “pondering” and “more personal” than previous efforts. In the picture-perfect video for ‘Walk Away’, Rudd is captured swimming in lakes, catching the surf and strumming his guitar, while booming bass drums amp up the track’s near-transcendent quality. It’s just one of many highlights on a record that celebrates strength and stability at their most powerful and fundamental. Backed by the gentle strum of acoustic guitar, on ‘Storm Boy’, Rudd sends out a postcard of a sun-drenched life lived outdoors: “Freedom of the heart is what we crave / When we sit by the river with a cup of tea / Watch the movement of the tide in the gentle breeze,” he sings, in his comfort-blanket voice. The Australian multi-instrumentalist’s new album title track best encapsulates this idea. The result is a personal sound that strikes a universal note.
Environmental work, activism, veganism, spiritualism, surfing, family camping trips in the bush and dog walks on the beach everything Rudd does, he pours into song. “I’m literally just singing about the things that are going on around me,” he says of his sublime and soaring indie-folk. The 1976 film, which was directed by Henri Safran, features David Gulpilil (“Walkabout”), who makes a cameo appearance in the new version.For Xavier Rudd, writing music and living his life are one and the same. In the present, meanwhile, Maddie asks granddad Michael to tell her the story of “the birds.” The two plot lines interweave and reach their endings together. Percival, and for a time the four “youngsters” frolic in Edenic bliss in the wave-swept and sandy wild. Meanwhile, back in the past, Michael succeeds in raising the three pelicans, the smallest of which he names (ahem) Mr. Maddie is furious with her father and tries to enlist her grandfather in her cause. In scenes set in the present day, grandfather and business executive Michael Kingley (Geoffrey Rush, also an executive producer), wrangles with his greedy son and environmentalist granddaughter Maddie (Morgana Davies) over plans to turn pristine land into a mining operation. Michael succeeds in keeping the birds alive with pulped fish with the help and encouragement of another coastal recluse, an aboriginal man named Fingerbone Bill (Trevor Jamieson of “Rabbit-Proof Fence”). In flashbacks, Tom’s home-schooled son Michael (a very good Finn Little), who learns vocabulary reading William Goldman’s “The Lord of the Flies,” finds three pelican hatchlings left orphaned by hunters. Like its predecessor, “Storm Boy” tells the story of a lonely child growing up in semi-seclusion on the Southern Australian coast with his father, “Hideaway Tom” Kingley (Jai Courtney), a fisherman whose wife and daughter were killed in an accident.
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