REYNE SERVED UP A HOUSE OF CARDS THAT ONLY A BIG BAD WOLF COULD EVER BLOW DOWN

https://youtu.be/2ZuUdLlpJf8?si=73QuA7fMyOZj6ZPE

Time for a big slab of classic lost Aussie rock I thought, and one such morsel which to me is grossly underated and never played on the radio is the rock heavy classic by James Reyne called HOUSE OF CARDS, a song released by the former Australian Crawl frontman in 1989. 

Typically of Reyne, his singing is wonderfully anthemic but quite impossible to understand through the verses, although at least for this song you can understand the words in the chorus. 

Try understanding one word in his hit song of 1987 FALL OF ROME besides what he mumbles about giving a dog a bone and I will give you 10 bucks. 

The one thing that I always liked about James Reyne`s solo output was the momentum of the songs, they had a production quality up there with all the American slick rock acts of the day but at the same time Reyne kept enough of the pub rock edge in his songs to let you know he was still all Aussie. 

His singing, despite being unique and powerful, was just not something you could understand most of the time. 

One of my favorite Reyne songs besides HOUSE OF CARDS is SLAVE, a song that is enhanced by the fact it was written by the legendary Jim Vallance, an old mate of Bryan Adams. 

His singing isn`t much better but the atmosphere of the song is powerful and riveting. HOUSE OF CARDS is the song I want to put in a plug for tonight, the classic line `house of cards and a house of sticks, where are you gonna put `em all your chinese tricks, gonna lay foundation solid on the ground`underwrites the whole song and is in true 80`s style repeated a few times in case you didn`t get the message the first time around that the `big bag wolf was going to blow the big house down`. 

Not sure who the big bad wolf is, in true Reyne metaphoric style you are forever kept in limbo as to what he was singing about. But it really does not matter all that much, HOUSE OF CARDS is a damn good Aussie pub rock song with beefed up American production qualities, it genuinely rocks from woe to go and there's not much else to say. 

It`s about time that an Australian radio station starting playing what is one of the great rock songs from an Australian artist. 20 years too late!