Disc 1 - CD

1. Buy Now Pay Later
2. Blow Up the Pokies
3. Fondness Makes the Heart Grow Absent
4. No Aphrodisiac
5. Beauty in Me
6. Fall for You
7. Melbourne
8. I Will Not Go Quietly
9. You Sound Like Louis Burdett
10. Thank You (for loving me at my worst)
11. Royal in the Afternoon
12. I Make Hamburgers
13. Gough
14. The Road is Lost (feat Torcha and TQO)
15. Following My Own Tracks
16. Shining
17. The Curse Stops Here (Live with SSO)
18. Keep the Light On (Live with SSO)
19. Out the Back
20. There's No-one

Disc 2 - DVD

1. The Stories Behind the songs interview with Tim Freedman Duration: 19:25
2. Making of Love This City Doco (from the whitlam years DVD) Dur: 15:57
3. Making of Torch The Moon Doco (from the whitlam years DVD) Dur: 7:02
4. Where Is She from the Byron Bay Festival 1995 (from the whitlam years DVD) Dur: 4:15
5. Live Performance of "Fondness Makes The Heart Grow Absent" (with SSO) Dur: 4.18
6. Live Performance of "Ease of the Midnight Visit" (with SSO) Dur: 4.57

CD & DVD version of the Best of the Whitlams - includes the hits Blow Up the Pokies and No Aphrodisiac as well as tracks recorded live with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra  plus a DVD featuring an hour of footage.

Forming in 1992, THE WHITLAMS are one of Australia's most respected and well-known bands. TRUTH, BEAUTY AND A PICTURE OF YOU captures all of The Whitlams much-loved hits from the beginning of their career and spans across their six studio albums. This special 'Best Of' release explores The Whitlams musical history - featuring favourites such as GOUGH, I MAKE HAMBURGERS, NO APHRODISIAC, BLOW UP THE POKIES and THANK YOU (FOR LOVING ME AT MY WORST) - and also includes a booklet with special track by track musical commentary. TRUTH, BEAUTY AND A PICTURE OF YOU includes KEEP THE LIGHT ON and THE CURSE STOPS HERE recorded live with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra - and a completely new track THE ROAD IS LOST

DISC 1 – LITTLE CLOUD
Been Away Too Long
He’s gone wandering and trouble has changed him. I’ve always wanted to use this Janis Joplin reference since someone said it to me after another rock and roll death. We managed to stay on one chord and one feel for the whole verse, which is a first for me. 

White Horses
I dreamt these lyrics while I was in New York. They sum up the feeling of writing a song again when you think you may not. When I returned they seemed to apply to political opposition in Australia. “Now we move amongst them” sums up the collective alienation I noticed in November 2004. 

I Was Alive
This is the first single. It’s trouble with girls. It’s a bar room stomp with honky tonk piano, real old fashioned Whitlams. We were a bar band for the first seven years. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” popped into my head one night walking home arguing with this gorgeous girl. When she goes to the newsagent, “she don’t know which one to buy, Australian Shooter, or Australian Bride.” 

Year of the Rat
This was written and recorded with Sydney jazz group Aronas. It’s about ambivalent feelings coming back to Sydney. 

12 Hours
Just piano and vocal. It’s dark, uneasy, visceral. I’m glad the producer J. Walker talked me into recording it without the band. I wanted to dress it up, but he said you don’t need to. 

Light On
This was co-written with J. It’s about a charming waistrel. A fellow who’s off the rails and we hope he’ll get his act together and not end up in Darwin. The music scene is littered with such time bombs, and I supposed I’ve been one myself in patches. 

Tonight
Very blue. That ethereal otherworldly feeling that often comes with loss. The chorus comes from a faltering translation of Rilke. And a few lines from the author Martine Murray who no longer has “food between her teeth” but still has a dog called Bear. In mastering it seemed to work best in mono. 

Little Cloud
The title track but a very relaxed affair. It sums up how I felt in New York looking back at Sydney. A mood of gentle reflection. Like a little cloud floating over Sydney, looking in vain for a co-conspirator. 


DISC 2 – The APPLE’s EYE
Beauty in Me
Inspired by an image I’ve had in my head for 20 years of a Sydney University student sitting cross-legged on the grass outside a party in York St, Glebe rocking forwards and backwards on a bad trip. It didn’t really come together in the recording until J. added the zither in the verses. People have warmed to this one at gigs. I guess there are a lot of bad pills around these days. The young girl now directs films – there’s a happy ending for you. 

Fondness Makes The Heart Grow Absent
This is probably my favourite song on the record. It talks of waking up blue and battling through it by the end of the day. It’s about losing touch with your fondness for the simple things having to get to the other side of the world to wake up to yourself. The battle is won with the help of a great restaurant that I frequented too often. 

Beautiful as You
This is about the sights of New York and looking forward to getting back home to someone who is as beautiful as the most beautiful things you’ve seen. Sweet, huh? 

Second Best
Clayton Doley, our ex-keyboardist wrote this one, and gave it to me because he thought it would suit. It was recorded in one take; they’re always my favourite recordings. It’s wonderfully self-depreciating. The narrator says “don’t you hesitate to call me, when only second best will do”.

Fancy Lover
This was my way of dealing subtly with a small heartbreak. I put a lot of time into the lyrics but it wasn’t quite working in the mix until Tony Cohen (engineer and producer for Nick Cave, Dirty Three) decided to take the drums out and uncover the harmonies, after we had listened to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York City”. 

Stay With Me
It started off as a discordant bar room stomp except for when I try to be the Doobie Brothers in the chorus. More images from walking around New York: going into bars and not having a drink, thinking about cicadas back in Sydney, etcetera. It was recorded with one take of the four core instruments and so it sounds like a band in a room. The solo section is really drunken and slow, an advantage of not recording with a tempo track. 

She’s Moving In
I’ve had this one for years but I’ve only ever played it at solo shows. It’s a novelty number. We recorded it like a Tom Waits song, banging away being angular. If you’re releasing a double album, I think you’re allowed a couple of peculiarities at the end of side two. It’s about a girl who decides to move in and when you see her belongings you think Poland was invaded with less. 

The Curse Stops Here
This song was originally a B-side to ‘Blow Up The Pokies’, written after I heard [former band member] Andy Lewis had died. It came very quickly and I was really emotional when I wrote it and I find it easy to plug back into that emotion when I sing it. We just put a tape in the desk when we played an outdoor gig with WASO (West Australian Symphony Orchestra). It was a lovely arrangement of the song. It’s not often you get a song that’s never appeared on an album played in concert by an 80 piece orchestra. Also it’s nice to end the album with some live applause.

The Whitlams tumultuous career is captured here in this extensive visual document. From the deaths of band members to record breaking success, through their first interview backstage in 1993 to live vision from every incarnation of the band; from archived TV performances to symphony orchestras, through documentaries on the making of their albums to ARIA Award speeches, these DVDs contain the complete history of the band.

The first DVD contains a complete catalogue of film clips, interactive discography and timeline, with over 90 minutes of documentaries and behind the scenes tour footage. The second DVD presents their Torch The Moon album launch of 2002, shot over 3 nights at Sydney's Metro Theatre, captured on 6 cameras and mixed with 24 track clarity. It celebrates the current band line-up in home town delight.

Features: 6 hours of footage, 53 Whitlams songs, 6 Documentaries, "Torch The Moon" album launch, Film Clips with commentary by Tim Freedman, interactive discography, family tree of band members, interactive timeline of every gig, early live footage and interviews.

The latest offering is 'Don't Believe Anymore', a cover of the 1984 Icehouse classic by Iva Davies, with whom The Whitlams' frontman Tim Freedman shares the uncanny ability to relate to his fellow countryman.

Freedman says "Iva asked me to sing this song for a release of his own, but the project fell through. I'd fallen in love with the song by then so I kept recording it, and put it on the bonus disc of our own album."

Freedman's silky lower register engages you immediately in 'Don't Believe Anymore' with its simple message of love and confusion. But this is a new sound for The Whitlams, for while demonstrating their trademark piano and vocal, it relies on programmed drums, and is assured to sound fresh on today's radio.

The single release of the catchy 'Don't Believe Anymore' contains three versions of the song plus four video clips from their latest album 'Torch The Moon'. As well as the single version, there is an extended mix, which uncovers the strings of the Australian Chamber Orchestra members taking over what was originally a very '80's saxophone solo in the 1984 version.

The third track is, curiously, a French language version, which grew out of The Whitlams' recent tour of that country where the band performed half the set in French. The film clip has also been shot in 2 languages and will be gracing televisions in Paris and Montreal within weeks.

'Don't Believe Anymore' reinforces The Whitlams' record of assembling well-orchestrated songs of depth, and is now included on the single disc version of the album.

The current cover will also be altered from the current orange cover to a new blue version and a new band shot will be added to the back cover.

The Torch The Moon album will have two new tracks added. The Whitlams cover of the Icehouse classic 'Don't Believe Anymore', originally released on the bonus disc of the original album, is being upgraded to the main disc. Another new song 'Last Life' also makes the main record.

Disc 2 will be titled '12 Track Rarities 1992-2003' and feature one of the songs recorded with the orchestra shows performed by Tim Freedman earlier this year. 'Out the Back' (Sculthorpe variation) will be the first song officially released from those performances.

REVIEW BY ROSS CLELLAND, Drum Media
September 10, 2002

The first pressing of this album was only 13-tracks, but contained a bonus 5-track CD titled "Side 4". Later pressings had the 2 bonus tracks added in the single "I Don't Believe Anymore" and "Last Life".

Track listing for SIDE 4:

1. I Don't Believe Anymore
2. Last Life
3. Witness Protection Scheme
4. Back Into The Wild
5. I'm Still In Love With You

This CD was manufactured for the fan-club only, on a pre-order basis, and was never sold through retail. It is no longer available.

1 (written by G.Macainish) As performed at the 1998 ARIA Awards

2 (written by B.Fink, T.Freedman) From the Oct/Nov 1998 demo sessions

3 (written by T.Freedman, A.Lewis, S.Plunder) Remixed and rebirthed by T.Freedman and R.Taylor Oct 1998

There were 3 separate releases of the No Aphrodisiac single, each with different bonus tracks. Tracks listing for Versions B & C are below:

BYO-E8 (B)

1. No Aphrodisiac (single mix)
2. Where Is She?
3. I Make Hamburgers
4. You Sound Like Louis Burdett
5. No Aphrodisiac (edit #1 mix)

BYO-E8 (C)

1. No Aphrodisiac (single mix)
2. Winter Lovin'
3. 1995
4. Charlie No.3
5. No Aphrodisiac (edit #1 mix)

Room For Your Dog mix - remixed by Harry O, additional programming by Brad Watts

Machine Gun Fellatio mix - rebirthed by 3Kshort, Chit Chat von Loopinstab

Headspace Caisidorpha mix - remixed by Scottie Scott

The Whitlams' hit song "No Aphrodisiac" was never intended to be a single, but heavy airplay of the album track forced Black Yak/Phantom to release it as one. A few months and 100,000 albums later, it became time for the song originally intended as the single from Eternal Nightcap: "Melbourne".

Eternal Nightcap was the first album of a new era for The Whitlams. When co-founder Stevie Plunder died in January 1996, Tim Freedman took four months off then set about regrouping, determined to take the band to the heights it had promised before tragedy struck. This album is the product of a year searching for a new dynamic. Its common thread is friendship. In general, it is sweet and sombre.

With Tim Freedman at its core, The Whitlams is something of a shifting sphere. He has drawn on his group of usual suspects to record the album:

Original member Andy Lewis plays bass on half the album, the rest is played by live cohort Michael Vidale and new recruit Cottco Lovett (Ute, Peril).

Guitars are played by Tim Hall, who handled live duties up to June '97, Stevie Plunder's brother Bernie Hayes, Spaniard Oscar Briz, Matt Galvin from Eva Trout and Tim's brother Nick Freedman.

Piano duties are shared by Tim and the inimitable Chris Abrahams (Midnight Oil, The Necks). There is also a cameo by Larry Muhoberac who played with Elvis Presley and arranged 'Hot August Night' for Neil Diamond. For Larry's work, listen to the jazz stylings in the quiet bridge of 'Up Against the Wall'.

String arrangements on three songs were provided by Sydney group Four Play and brass by old friends Paul Jensen and Andy Kell of the Kaempfert Zone.

Eternal Nightcap was recorded over a year in various studios, utilising the best of analogue and digital technology. For example, drums and Hammond organ were recorded with the classic valve gear onto two inch tape at Paradise in Woolloomooloo. Pianos and strings were recorded in Studio 1 at Alberts. Modern portable hard disk recording made it possible to track most of the fiddly bits and backing vocals at home, freeing up more time for mixing .

The album was mixed on the 48 channel SSL desk at Alberts by Rob Taylor, (Introducing & Undeniably The Whitlams, Def FX, Eva Trout) and to add extra warmth, the final mixes were transferred to half-inch analogue tape. These were then mastered by Don Bartley at Studio 301.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13 written by Tim Freedman
6 written by Tim Freedman, Andy Lewis, Stevie Plunder
8 written by Tim Freedman, Stevie Plunder
10 written by Tim Freedman, Andy Lewis
12 written by Tim Freedman, Andy Lewis, Stevie Plunder
7, 9 written by Stevie Plunder
10 written by Tim Freedman, Stevie Plunder
14 written by Tim Freedman, Mark Wells