

Part of Australia’s Stolen Generations as a child, Murri man Kev Carmody began releasing folk-influenced records with a strong social message in the late 1980s. His 1990 album doesn’t mince words, and indeed the title track of Eulogy (For a Black Person) is a richly psychedelic meditation on death as a chance to reconnect with the natural world. The standout “Cannot Buy My Soul” is a protest song about First Nations peoples resisting colonization at every turn, while the loose- and light-sounding “Sexual Teaser” firmly calls out men who see women as little more than potential conquests. Likewise, “Blood Red Rose” seems placid until the lyrics reveal a painful portrait of big-city loneliness. Carmody’s robust moral compass has won him many fans—including Paul Kelly, whose band The Messengers contribute here alongside members of Mixed Relations. Soon after this record, Carmody and Kelly would co-write the era-defining anthem “From Little Things Big Things Grow,” and years later Kelly would curate a Carmody tribute album called Cannot Buy My Soul. The enduring strength of Carmody’s songbook began with 1988’s outspoken Pillars of Society and continued through this record and others in the songwriter’s prolific 1990s.