The Blackeyed Susans

Caption from the band’s FB page dated 2019: “David McComb, Rob Snarski and Phil Kakulas – our GoodFellas pose – 26 years ago. Shot in Melbourne at The Standard Hotel on b&w polaroid by Eamon Gallagher [we think].”

Blackeyed Susans playlist

Contributor: Glenn Smith & Andrew Shields

The Blackeyed Susans are an Australian band known for blending elements of country, folk, rock, and dark balladry. They have earned critical acclaim over the decades for their unique fusion of genres and emotionally resonant music. While they never achieved mainstream commercial success, they have remained a beloved and respected act in the Australian alternative music scene.

Formed in 1989 in Perth, Western Australia, their music can be described as cinematic, atmospheric, and emotive, characterized by lush arrangements, moody lyrics, and an introspective, world-weary tone. Their music remains a touchstone for those who appreciate sensitive, evocative songwriting and they’ve maintained a dedicated following for over three decades.

Initially, the group was a loose collective of musicians with a shifting lineup that included members of two other prominent Perth bands: the Triffids and Chad’s Tree. Singer Rob Snarski came from Chad’s Tree, a band he shared with his brother Mark and David McComb (of the Triffids) was a founding Susan and a key influence on their early sound. There are other significant players from the Triffids and others in their early days, but for the sake of brevity Snarski and McComb teaming up with bassist Phil Kakulas leads to the formation of the band. McComb’s involvement with the band was a significant factor in the early material.

Their early nineties recordings established them in the Australian indie scene. They then released several albums that cemented their reputation, including Mouth To Mouth (1995) and Spin The Bottle (1997). These albums showcased their ability to blend intimate, acoustic storytelling with expansive soundscapes. During this time, they built a dedicated following while touring extensively across Australia and gaining a reputation for powerful live performances.

In the 2000s, the band slowed down in terms of output, but they continued to release music sporadically. Albums such as Shangri-La (2003) and Close Your Eyes And See (2017) showcased a more polished, restrained sound while maintaining the emotional depth and beauty of their earlier work.

The key element in their sound is the singing of Rob Snarski. His voice carries a sense of melancholy and intimacy, which perfectly suits the band’s atmospheric, often sombre, material. His smooth, mellifluous delivery brings a soothing, almost hypnotic, quality to the music, drawing listeners into the emotional depth of the songs.

The band excel at creating rich, evocative soundscapes. They use layers of instrumentation – acoustic and electric guitars, piano, organ, strings, and occasional brass or woodwinds – to build an atmosphere that complements the lyrical themes of longing and introspection.
Their arrangements often feel cinematic, with a sense of slow-building drama. Instruments are used not just to carry melody but to enhance mood, often employing reverb, space, and silence to powerful effect. They use subtle shifts in dynamics to guide the listener through a song’s emotional landscape, building tension or allowing moments of quiet reflection.

The Susans’ musicians are masters of mood and atmosphere. Their style emphasizes emotional subtlety and a refined blend of country, folk, and rock elements, all wrapped in a cinematic, noirish aesthetic. Each musician contributes to the band’s rich, haunting sound with restraint and elegance, ensuring the music feels timeless, evocative, and deeply textured. Coupled with the genius of Snarski’s voice and phrasing, they are a band to be savoured late at night.

Close Watch is a John Cale cover, the arrangement is shaped around some fine double bass work by Kakulas and a stunning vocal by Snarski, who grasps Cale’s angst and pulls the song tightly around his voice. Beautiful.

We Australians love the road. We’ve got plenty of space and we like to use it, literally and metaphorically. Ed Kuepper wrote of the salty sea air of the coastal road, McComb extolled the wide-open road as a refuge from pain, and McLennan spoke of going back to a house of tin and timber and the cane fields. In Blue Skies, Blue Sea, Snarski sings of the leaving and the return, holding hands while the headlights shine. Miles from nowhere he takes us to the place where the heart speaks of not having each other, but still having the road and the sea. Sustained by a superb piece of pedal steel, this is as perfect a ballad as you will ever hear.

I Am A Singer is a melancholic yet beautiful song that exemplifies the band’s signature blend of dark, brooding lyricism and rich, atmospheric instrumentation. It evokes a sense of longing and introspection, typical of their style, which draws from folk, country, and gothic rock influences. The track’s slow tempo, combined with Snarski’s soulful, haunting vocals, gives it a reflective, almost meditative quality. Lyrically, it touches on themes of identity, performance, and perhaps the burden of being in the spotlight.

Delivered with cool detachment by Snarski, To Skin A Man has an unsettling mood, as if he’s recounting a grim story from a distance. The instrumentation is restrained, with minimalist arrangements that emphasize the emotional weight of the lyrics. As with much of the band’s work, To Skin A Man blends poetic lyricism with a kind of desolate beauty, making it feel both timeless and uniquely Australian in its plaintive tone. The song unfolds like a foreboding tale, with its slow, deliberate pacing. There’s a sense of menace and tension that builds throughout the track, reflecting both the violence hinted at in the title and a deeper exploration of human nature.

We Could’ve Been Someone is a poignant and wistful track that captures the Susans’ ability to convey a sense of lost opportunity and bittersweet reflection. The song is steeped in melancholy, with its lyrics exploring themes of regret, unfulfilled potential, and the passage of time. It’s as much a reflection on what could have been as it is on what remains, with the gentle, mournful delivery of the vocals adding to the emotional depth of the song.

The track has a subdued quality, with instrumentation that supports the introspective mood. The band’s use of space and restraint, as well as their ability to blend a range of influences, shines through here creating a delicate balance between nostalgia and sorrow. A great “what if” song, it taps into a universal feeling of yearning for something more, something just out of reach. The band with their understated elegance and emotional sincerity, create a tender haunting reminder of life’s fleeting opportunities.

Glenn Smith

Glenn has sketched in the background to the group so well above that I can concentrate – without further ado – on my song selections.

They start with Ocean Of You. This is one of David McComb’s finest songs and has a tango-gypsy feel which is markedly different from his work with the Triffids. For me, it seems clear that he wrote it with Snarski’s voice in mind. The benchmarks for the latter’s vocal here are artists like Roy Orbison and post-1950s Elvis. Indeed, it is a tribute to his supreme skill as a singer that he does not seem out of place in that company. One of the many pleasures of the group’s take on the song is the contrast between the darkness of the lyric (there are some wishes that never should come true) and the smoothness of Snarski’s vocal.

Will’s Blues is a countryish song, written by Will Akers – a close friend of McComb’s and one-time member of the Triffids – who died last year. It has that air of world-weary regret which few bands can carry off anywhere near as well as the Susans.

By contrast, Trouble is almost a ‘torch’ song, although the only clubs in which it could be sung would have to be ones for lost souls. Snarski’s vocal has a Sinatra-like crooner quality here, while the sparse backing lends a deeply melancholic air to the song.

Dream On is a much later song by the band but it remains true to its original spirit and vision. The template here seems to be songs by artists like the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison (again). There is a beautiful subtlety to Snarski’s singing here, which means that the song holds its own in such company. There is also some lovely and uncorny pedal steel playing by Graham Lee, of Triffids fame.

As Glenn pointed out above, one of the Susans great strengths is their ability to blend disparate influences. On Lover Or The Loved, they mix a Velvets-like riff with a mellow almost country rock sound. This blend probably should not have worked but it does.

Over the past thirty something years, then, the Susans have produced a relatively small but extremely high-quality body of work. Over that time, they have maintained a distinctive musical vision and a quirky originality which is deserving of a much wider audience than they have gained to date. As Glenn has pointed out, in Rob Snarski they also have one of the best singers in Australian rock music.

Andrew Shields

The Blackeyed Susans Official Website

The Blackeyed Susans Facebook

Rob Snarski official website

ZO Magazine band interview

Rob Snarski, Phil Kakulas, Warren Ellis interviewed for Australian TV

Nicholas Jones interview for Tone Deaf (2010)

Beat Magazine (Melbourne) feature

Toppermost #1,105: The Triffids

The Blackeyed Susans biography (AllMusic)

Glenn Smith lives in Sydney and teaches high school English, plays very bad guitar with his bass playing son and spends far too much time thinking about The Beatles…

Andrew Shields is a freelance historian, who grew up in the West of Ireland and currently lives in Sydney. Along with an interest in history, politics and literature, his other principal occupations are listening to and reading about the music of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs.

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