Number 5 – King Stingray – Get Me Out

In 2022, King Stingray released their eponymous debut album. It was an absolute blinder. A proper, soaring, distinctly Australian pop-rock delight. It remains in my top few albums of the decade thus far. And I knew before I’d finalised my top ten Australian songs for this little project – or even started writing any down – that a King Stingray song was going to be in it. There were a couple of strong contenders, but the song ‘Get Me Out’ quickly revealed itself as the inevitable pick. For anyone who’s lived in both the city and the country, it’s a song that pulls on your tendons like a beak pulls worms.

‘Get Me Out’ is literally about getting out of city. Word. It’s gotta be done sometimes. The urge comes of its own accord. Like a bird that yearns to migrate, the pull cannot be resisted when it does. Having grown up in Geraldton, I know what it’s like to want to get out of Perth. Of course, my experience of the desire to get out of the city completely pales in comparison to the urge to get back to Country surely felt by the Yolŋu members of King Stingray (in particular). These are initiated men for who English isn’t even their fifth language, let alone their first. The city has its place, but it’s not Country. It’s not Sweet Arnhem land. Can’t come close.

Musically, the song has a pulse (that pulse!) and a chord progression that resembles the melodic habits of Neil Finn. The instrumentation is richer than a lot of the stuff Finn’s done, though; more layers, and yet uncluttered. And as good as Finn is as a singer, and as good as his brother and the original Crowded House members are, they cannot match the boys of King Stingray, especially when they shift from English to Yolŋu. The two primary vocalists, Yirrŋa Yunupiŋu and Dimathaya Burarrwanga, soar above the melody in ecstatic harmony. Their voices are incredibly powerful, fusing the notion of journey with the release of arrival. The fact that these vocals within the song are song in Language I don’t speak doesn’t matter in the slightest.

But the lyrics that are in English speak to me loudly and clearly. The lines, “The sun goes down in the distance/I wish that you could see this” resonate deeply. That idea that there is a natural, sacred world out there – strong and enduring even when I’m surrounded by concrete and glass – is profoundly affirming. It’s not long after these lines that the vocals are at their most intense, with guitarist, Roy Kellaway adding a laying of chiming, post-rock guitar that gives the song it’s transcendental qualities. It simply bursts with life.

Another line I love is ‘The colours are changing, Djäpana” – a Yolŋu word meaning ‘sunset dreaming’. This speaks a deep, deep truth to me. I could spend forever trying to unpack my (limited) understanding of the concept of Dreaming, but really, the best thing one can do is focus on the beauty of the sunset. If you can do it without thinking of anything else at all, but can feel the spirit of the place around you – the real place, not the built shit – you might glimpse something.

We all get lost in the city. It’s real and unreal. And what does it mean to get lost there? More than anything else, I think it means that we are quickly susceptible to see the physical world in a way that reduces our perceptions down to the built veneer we’ve imposed. In the context of 60,000 years and the Dreaming, it’s nothing. Sandcastles at best. Play there if you like, but don’t start thinking that you spirit can live there. And if you’re stuck in the city, knowing that its falsehoods are starting to erode you, look to the horizon. The sunset. We’ve not yet built over all of that.

Just writing this makes me want to go where there are a million more stars.

Get me out of the city.