New project brought into the fold

Paul Andrews might not be a household name, but he’s a dependable songsmith.
Source: Supplied

ROCK

Family Fold, Lustre Glo

(Independent) ****1/2

Paul Andrews has long been one of my favourite Australian songwriters. He’s not a household name and presumably never will be. But for well-crafted songs about all our aches and pains, and occasional joys, he’s as dependable as a Swiss watch.

His band Lazy Susan won plenty of love and respect, if not chart success, across a 12-year and four-album career. You might remember songs like Bobby Fischer and Canada as favourites on Triple J.

Family Fold is Andrews’ new project and you can sense his excitement at having a broader palette to work with. Of course there are still great pop-rock tunes that fit the Lazy Susan style like Single Twin.

But there are songs like Shanie Love, with glistening keyboards and a drum machine to the fore. And the heartbreakingly beautiful country rock song Pot of Gold which is one of the finest songs I’ve ever heard about all the perils of the creative life.

You will never take lightly what that involves again when you hear Andrews deliver lines like these:

“What make someone do such foolish things?/Chasing something so hard no matter what it brings.’’

Lustre Glo by Family Fold

It’s not even over when you call time: “You think you are over them and the damage they’ve done/But you turn on the radio and they visit you in song.’’

Andrews has made a concerted effort not to make a record that sounds like Lazy Susan II. There is the bristling opener, Get A Grip Upon Yourself, which rattles along like Spoon at their most lean and hungry. On How Come You Only Call Me When You’re Getting High Maia Jelavic steps up to take a lead vocal, while New Friends is another male-female duet (with Sarah Humphreys) with some superb acoustic guitar finger-picking.

But it’s Andrews’ gifts as the writer of insidiously catchy pop tunes with lyrics that are both witty and wise that always carries the day. He’s like an Australian version of Ray Davies or Squeeze’s songwriting team of Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, able to create vignettes from everyday life that stay with the listener long after the record has finished playing.

Unlike those champions of song he’s never had a worldwide hit, but that is certainly not for want of quality. It’s so great to hear him with such a spring in his step, still up for the battle to be heard, sprinkling his songs with soul influences (see Batman and Robin In Reverse), finding new ways to sing about letting go and moving on in Amazing Grace and I’m The One (Who’ll Never You Leave).

When you write songs as good as these, and Pot Of Gold in particular, you have no choice. It’s too late to stop now.

Noel Mengel

#COMPTON http://t.co/FZsGDTUyai
https://t.co/bPyXaLdIcv

— Dr. Dre (@drdre) August 7, 2015

HIP HOP

Dr Dre, Compton

(Universal) ****

Occasionally a hip hop record comes through that demands everyone’s attention, rap fans or not. Like Illmatic by Nas or Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. Dre’s latest is another. For years it was rumoured that an album called The Detox would be the next solo release by the one-time NWA member. Instead he drops this, taking inspiration from the new NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton. It sounds fresh and now, and even a long roll call of guests, from Lamar to Snoop Dogg and Eminem, doesn’t overcook the bubbling stew. This record embraces all the pain of life for oppressed people anywhere, for many of whom life is just as tough and dangerous now as it was when NWA ruled. But at heart this is music that’s as switched into reality as Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Going On was in 1969 or Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back in 1987. And that’s a remarkable thing from an artist who is a millionaire many times over. Compton is like a movie painted in your head — of sound, of story, of suspense.

Noel Mengel

INSTRUMENTAL

Joe Satriani, Shockwave Supernova

(Legacy) ***1/2

There are guitar solos, then there are solo guitarists. Joe Satriani has been letting his six-string do the singing for decades now, and his 15th album confirms his virtuoso status as he communicates without the need for words. It’s no mean feat to maintain the listener’s interest throughout an instrumental album, but smokin’ Joe pulls it off. Lost in a Memory is suitably subdued, while Crazy Joey lets loose with a jamming vibe. In My Pocket and San Francisco Blue power along on bluesy grooves, the former erupting into one of the best solos on the album. Satriani reaches a dramatic peak with On Peregrine Wings, while rapid piano adds a sense of urgency to Keep On Movin’, which also employs fuzzy guitar. Effects are used well on the lilting Butterfly and Zebra, while All of My Life and the evocative Stars Race Across the Sky are similarly easy-listening. A funereal opening belies the upbeat vibe of If There is No Heaven, and Goodbye Supernova wraps up proceedings in interstellar style.

John O’Brien

ROCK

Datura 4, Demon Blues

(Alive Naturalsound) ***

Perth-based Dom Mariani is never short of a new angle — or one we haven’t heard for a while. There is jangling power pop (The Stems, DM3), surf instrumentals (The Majestic Kelp) and now Datura 4. Mariani is joined by fellow guitarist/vocalist Greg Hitchcock (You Am I and The New Christs) and pumps up the volume and wah wah pedal with a tip of the cap to Australian blues-rock of the early ’70s. While they take inspiration from the likes of Coloured Balls and Billy Thorpe, they also no doubt share a taste for Alice Cooper (see the thunderous title tune). But the band they most resemble is The Master’s Apprentices from their hard rock phase.
You Ain’t No Friend of Mine,Journey Home and Hoonville are heavy, riff-driven monsters, but melody will always be at the heart of anything Mariani does. There is room for a smoother element too on songs like Another Planet and Gravedigger Man, a tune that would have fitted easily into The Stems catalogue. Elsewhere though it’s Marshalls cranked to the max.

Noel Mengel

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Source: Supplied

ROCK

The Dark Horses, Tunnel at the End of the Light

(Dark Horse/Inertia) ****

We hear so little about this topic these days but this latest album from The Dark Horses (no longer Tex Perkins and …) sounds magnificent, rich yet uncluttered like the inner sleeve shot of the band in an (almost) treeless field. Perkins is still here and has a hand in writing most of material, but as ever it’s as much about the vast spaces evoked by the music as the voice up front. This is a great band (their number includes veteran guitarists Joel Silbersher and Charlie Owen) and as a unit they create moods that complement Perkins’s morning-after vocals as well, maybe better, than any of his many projects these past 30 years. Slide On By, an eight-minute contemplation on matters of the heart and belief, is a towering centrepiece, topped by haunted electric guitar, while the two instrumentals that follow it bring the listener back to solid ground. There is a deep darkness in these swirling currents (see the plea for forgiveness of Last Words). But there is hope and redemption too in the calming beauty of the music of The Dark Horses.

Noel Mengel

POP

Szymon, Tigersapp

(Eloper/EMI) ***1/2

There is a delicate afterglow to Australian songwriter Szymon’s music, like it was recorded with soft winter light coming through the window of his home studio, his gentle yet hypnotic voice curling around these well-crafted musical settings. There is a lightness of spirit about his songs and voice. This isn’t music that makes you furrow your brow, it has a real sense of joy that makes the listener smile, whether it is bright-eyed instrumentals such as Katushya (Air fans, come on down) or the insidious pop of Medusa. Szymon worked through 2008 on these tunes: he was on the verge of signing a record deal with EMI when he took time out to battle depression. Four years later he took his life. Yet his music, now finally released to the world, is vibrant, vital, alive. It swings, on hip-shaking pop gems like Runaway, and takes fascinating and lush instrumental detours like Saigon or the cool sax and Latin flavours of Zoo Story. He was mature way beyond his years as a musician, only 19 as he put this music together, a gift left behind to light our way.

Noel Mengel

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Source: Supplied

CLASSICAL

Beaux Arts Trio, Complete Philips Recordings

(Decca) ****

When Beaux Arts Trio players were photographed in 1985 on their 30th anniversary as a trio, receiving compact disc players from conductor Bernard Haitink, it was early days for CD technology. But before it too is superseded this 60-CD set preserves the art of the original Beaux Arts Trio, Menahem Pressler (piano), Daniel Guilet (violin), Bernard Greenhouse (cello), who made their team debut in 1955 and through personnel changes over the years until it disbanded in 2008. Pianist Pressler has been a constant force, maintaining the solid foundation evidenced in the forthright clarity of piano trios of Haydn (nine CDs), Mozart (six) and expressive adventures in works by Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Shostakovich among others, including their oft-repeated Piano Trio in A Minor of Maurice Ravel. Taut partnership in classical mode or in Ned Rorem’s 1993 Spring Music for violin, cello and piano, plus ensemble works from David N. Baker, Erich Korngold and Alexander Zemlinsky, provides chamber music of the first order.

Patricia Kelly

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