#calenture

The Triffids - A Trick of the Light (1987)

I was really disappointed in the Triffids 4th LP Calenture; it was so overproduced. Only recently I learned that they'd released a remastered version with demos. The demos are fantastic! Similar to their LP In the Pines. When not smothered in 80s production, the brilliance of David McComb's songwriting shines through.

A recent spell of warm weather made me think of the word “calenture.” It’s the Word of the Day. Calenture is an illness or condition brought on by equatorial heat and is often associated with sailors in the tropics. It’s a sort of temporary insanity caused by heatstroke. The word calenture comes from the Spanish “calentura,” meaning “fever,” and from the Latin “calere,” to be warm.  

Sailing ships would enter the Doldrums, an area in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean near the equator where the winds are dead calm. With no wind to fill the sails and get the ship moving, it could be stuck there for weeks at a time. Today, being “in the doldrums” refers to any state of inactivity, listlessness or stagnation. 

As the story goes, the sun would beat down, sailors would go crazy from the awful, unrelenting heat and, in their delirium, they would imagine the sea was just a great big grassy meadow – and they would jump overboard to start walking home. That was “calenture.” It didn’t turn out well for them. 

The Triffids - Save What You Can (1987)

Born Sandy Devotional by the Triffids is one of my all-time favorite LPs, but the next big studio LP Calenture was a bit disappointing at the time. Listening now, I may have judged too harshly. This is the majestic closing track.

The Triffids were the kind of band for whom, in retrospect, obscene cult appreciation seemed inevitable, even deliberate. David McComb’s monstrously passionate, unapologetically sincere, often very weird lyrics atop, the band’s songs blended country, folk, jangle and strings into a hyper-melodic, immensely scaled and fabulously well-crafted brand of post-punk. All that was likely further made distinct by geography: as many have noted before me, The Triffids’ hometown of Perth isn’t just isolated because it’s in Australia, it’s isolated even within Oz. For me, Perth doesn’t leave so much desolation, solitude or aridity in these tunes; it instead contributes to their outlook. Without feeling need to obey other post-punk trends in ‘coolness’ or ‘restraint’, the band could instead be as earnest and strange, as belting and untethered as they damn pleased.

The Triffids - Trick of the Light

The Triffids - Bury me deep in Love