Music to skip to won’t leave a sour taste
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Skipping Girl Vinegar recorded their new one with Nashville producer Brad Jones in a variety of tin sheds and halls by the Victorian coast.
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THIS week’s album reviews from The Courier-Mail (ratings out of five stars):
ROCK
SKIPPING GIRL VINEGAR, The Great Wave
(Secret Fox/MGM) ****
The title refers to the great wave of life, and the renewing force of the ocean makes numerous appearances in this third album from Melbourne band Skipping Girl Vinegar.
Recorded with Nashville producer Brad Jones in a variety of tin sheds and halls by the Victorian coast, sweet memories of less-complicated times recur almost as often as the salty spray.
The album’s opening lines are: “Summer caught fire when the school bell rang/Sixteen and running with your best friends.’’ The Springsteenesque lyrics are backed by music that has a summery, celebratory tone, folk-pop pumped up with brass and a pulsing, excited rhythm that feels as though the band is about to levitate. The result is more like The Waterboys than The River.
Bike returns to the same longing for the freedom of younger years, of riding a bike along a sandy track before diving into the ocean.
The band’s singer and lyricist, Mark Lang, surrounded by a swirl of orchestral instruments, concludes: “When life feels like it’s crashing in/One deep breath and you’re living life again.’’
The band went on hold after touring 2011’s Keep Calm and Carry the Monkey, when Lang’s wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She has recovered, but of course that experience prints through into the music.
There are direct anthems of hope, such as Hey Kid (“We’re building a fire and wrapping our love around you’’) and Making Our Way (“Live your life free/Got to take back tomorrow’’).
Doubt and fears are impossible to avoid. Lost in the Heads is an allegory for life’s stormy seas;
Weary World, like some lost Beach Boys ballad circa Surf’s Up, wonders: “We need to slow and listen to the ocean more.’’
An anthemic feeling of optimism is never far away in the music, as heard in the joyful delivery of Punch This Heart of Mine, with its thumping piano and singalong chorus, and the let’s-get-out-of-here sentiments of Westcoast.
Even Refugee, the harrowing tale of a refugee’s escape from the horrors of war, is delivered with an almost sunny chorus that will have you singing along before you realise just what you’re singing about.
The natural elements that surrounded the band as they recorded never feel far away in these songs. They’ve made the kind of record that sounds best in the car, windows down, city behind, a few days of freedom ahead. Another of those reminders, as Warren Zevon once said, to enjoy every sandwich.
Noel Mengel
DANCE
THE PRODIGY, The Day is My Enemy
(Cooking Vinyl) ***
Has it really been five years since Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy? Never ones to be hurried with an album release, the British trio of dance architect Liam Howlett and vocalists Keith Flint and Maxim are 25 years in with all the expected elements on album No 6. The title track starts with a motorcycle-like guitar loop and quickly builds into artillery-like beats. Massive Attack collaborator Martina Topley-Bird sings snatches of Cole Porter’s All Through the Night over the churn making the song a compelling listen. The album drops into a rapid groove with pitch-shifted bass and Flint and Maxim riffing off each other’s shouted phrases on Nasty. The band’s desire to push the envelope is still strong with the poppier Rhythm Bomb lightened by the chorus from Jomanda’s Make My Body Rock. Best track is Ibiza, with the Sleaford Mods cynically expletive asides and shared chorus vocals with Flint singing about the party island. However, the album focuses too much on heavy beats instead of changing it up.
Bill Johnston
CLASSICAL
VARIOUS ARTISTS, In Their Branches: Musical Reflections on the Magic of Trees
(ABC Classics) ***1/2
Japanese guru Yoshifumi Miyazaki’s theory on Shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing’’), benefits noted by Courier-Mail columnist Kathleen Noonan, brought a deeper dimension to my (almost) daily health walks in suburban Wishart’s splendid woodlands. Now sitting amid those enveloping energies is magic. Magic also is this CD, a superb package. It includes
Nocturnal Power of Trees by Richard Mills conducting Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; Jane Rutter’s mysterious Kodama Tree Spirit (Jane Rutter flute, Bertie Rutter Boekemann voice); Roger Woodward (piano) in Miriam Hyde’s Lonely Trees; percussionist David Jones creating Forest Walk; Wolfgang Holzmair and pianist Imogen Cooper in Schubert’s Linden Tree; orchestral grandeur in Ottorino Respighi’s Pine Trees near a Catacomb; plus works of Scott Joplin, Toru Takemitsu, Julian Yu, Dvorak, Sculthorpe and others. But no Peter Dawson or masters Paul Robeson or Mario Lanza singing Trees
. Go catch it on YouTube.
Patricia Kelly
COUNTRY
LEE KERNAGHAN, Spirit of the Anzacs
(ABC Music/Universal) ***1/2
Encapsulating the Australian experience in 100 years of conflict is a massive task and one Kernaghan does not take on lightly, working here with songwriting collaborators Garth Porter and Colin Buchanan. The songs pay respect to the personal stories Kernaghan found in his research at the Australian War Memorial and his voice suits the folk foundations of songs such as Oh Passchendaele, based on a letter from a New Zealander describing battle in Belgium where more than 8000 Anzacs died in October 1917. The songs range across a century of war, from Gallipoli to the bombing of Darwin and fighting in Afghanistan. Kernaghan calls in guests, including Sara Storer (Song For Grace, from the point of view of a woman whose brothers served in WWI), John Schumann (Kokoda) and diplomat/songwriter Fred Smith (The Dust of Uruzgan). By staying true to these stories the album mostly avoids the syrupy and anthemic, except in the title tune. Proceeds from that song go to Soldier On and Legacy.
Noel Mengel
ROOTS
BRAD BUTCHER, Jamestown
(Independent) ***1/2
Some songwriters know that is their calling from an early age and pursue it with single-minded purpose. Others come the long way around, like Queensland songwriter Butcher. Either way what really matters is that they have something to say and a way of saying it that helps them stand out from the crowd, and Butcher has both. Butcher might be a late starter but he’s not wasting another day. As he sings in Lost Years: “I spent way too many years trying to be someone’s idea of the kind of me they wanted me to be.’’ This second album, recorded in New Jersey with a fine cast of players, will probably find him filed under country in Australia although it’s really folk-rock from a storyteller’s point of view. There are gentle songs of hope like Simple Things, lifted up by Rich Hinmen’s pedal steel guitar, and story songs like the title tune, which ranges from the early English settlement in America to unresolved tensions still felt today. Nothing feels overcooked or too familiar here, and fans of Australian storytellers such as Busby Marou and Shane Nicholson will find plenty to enjoy.
Noel Mengel
SOUL
VAN MORRISON, Duets
(Sony) ***1/2
Van has never been one to resist a crack at the perils of the music biz (and, considering some of his experiences with heavies in the ‘60s, he probably has a right to). But the negative connotations of the subtitle for Duets (“Reworking The Catalogue’’) doesn’t do justice to the music, where Morrison revisits an interesting selection with a sympathetic group of vocal partners, from Mavis Staples (a magical gospel-charged take on If I Ever Needed Someone) to Stevie Winwood (a superb Fire In The Belly). Duets albums are usually seen by critics as admissions the creative fires are running down, but since Morrison has been releasing mostly high-grade original albums for half a century, we should give him a break. Admirably, he resists going back to familiar hits and finds the timeless spark in tunes like The Eternal Kansas City (with Gregory Porter) and Rough God Goes Riding (with daughter Shana Morrison). Those included to hook some new listeners, like Michael Buble and Joss Stone, don’t let the side down. Not essential listening for long-time fans, but better than they might have expected.
Noel Mengel
ROCK
VAN HALEN, Tokyo Dome Live in Concert
(Rhino/Warner) ***
With Van Halen announcing a new North American tour — which will hopefully go global — fans can bone up with this double album recorded at Tokyo Dome in 2013. The band — now with 50 per cent more Van Halen, as Eddie’s son Wolfgang replaces Michael Anthony on bass; and 100 per cent more David Lee Roth — have truly returned to form. Just don’t expect any material from the more-than-respectable Sammy Hagar era. This is all about Diamond Dave’s triumphant return, showcasing his old stuff (Running With the Devil, Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love, Ice Cream Man), his chart-topping stuff (Jump, Panama, I’ll Wait) and the most recent studio album (Tattoo, She’s the Woman, China Town). And it wouldn’t be complete without an eight-minute guitar Eruption — incorporating Little Guitars — from Eddie. Roth has lived in Japan and learnt the language, much to the crowd’s delight. We’ve had a live album with Sammy Hagar, now here’s one with the original — and arguably best — frontman.
John O’Brien
