Image by Tim Baker //

The Inner West quintet give the Waits classic the treatment it deserves.

With the notion of heading to the pub to catch a band becoming a distant memory and our only source of live music coming through low-res Instagram live streams, it’s easy to forget the impact overdriven guitars and thumping drums can have on our state of being. Thankfully today we’re serving a firm reminder of what rock and roll should be, in the form of Lincoln’s Gold’s cover of Tom Waits’ 1992 bravado fuelled tune ‘Goin’ Out West’.

Ditching Waits’ low end for more of a low-fi flavour, the group are clearly avoiding adding extra shine to the tune, going head to head with the original’s disregard for convention and somehow managing to coat it with an extra layer of grit. Let’s face it, no one wants to hear an Enya-like cover of this tune, and the lads have made sure that’s the furthest thing from our mind.

Tackling a track that features one of music’s most iconic voices is no small feat either, but frontman Bill Robinson’s loose but forceful just-smoked-a-pack-then-ate-the-fucken-ashtray vocals hit the nail right on the head. A live favourite, the band also give us the crashy outro that punters who’ve been catching them playing around town will be all too familiar with.

“This is Tom Waits at his most sleazy and intense. We’ve been closing out our live show with this tune for a while now, and figured it’d be a good B-side for an upcoming single,” Bill says of the release. “A lot has happened since we hatched that plan—most notably this whole coronavirus thing—so we’ve postponed the release of that original single, and dropped this on its own instead. Also, I look good without a shirt on, and I enjoy telling people.”

Let’s hope this corona thing blows over soon and we can get back to catching bands like Lincoln’s Gold in the unapologetic flesh.