Album reviews: Fringe dweller now impossible to ignore

ALBUM REVIEWS: She’s been an outsider in Australian music, but this latest effort recorded witha big name will bring her to new prominence.

She’s been on the fringes for quite a while, but Jess Ribeiro is now impossible to ignore.

THIS week’s album reviews from The Courier-Mail (ratings out of five stars):

ROCK

Jess Ribeiro, Kill It Yourself

(Barely Dressed/Inertia) ****

On this second album Jess Ribeiro goes further, ruminates more deeply, focuses more intently — and blazes with an intensity that sets her way above the everyday pop throng.

Darwin-based Ribeiro has been a well-regarded talent on the fringes of Australian music for quite a while, but here she delivers an album that’s not just promising but impossible to ignore.

It should be noted straight up that she has done it in collaboration with that Australian master of outsider music, Mick Harvey, a man who has played a role in so many special recordings these past 35 years, either as producer, as a key collaborator with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and PJ Harvey, or on his own solo work.

“Rivers on fire, everything is falling apart,’’ Ribeiro offers on the extraordinary incantation that is Rivers on Fire, singing amid a burble of distant voices and sax and Harvey’s heartbeat drums. PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, you have company.

Run Rabbit Run takes the country nuances of her earlier work and heads upriver (“the dark and oily river’’) into the heart of darkness, with a combination of floor-tom rumble, spectral slide guitar and droning viola and cello. It creates something ominous, the atmosphere of a northern sky about to be split apart by lightning.

As with the rest of the album, you don’t have to know where it’s coming from to get where it’s going.

This isn’t country music, or even alt-country. But that’s where the music takes you, into a dangerous yet beautiful interior, both geographically and emotionally. Born To Ride hovers like a heat shimmer at the end of the straight as Ribeiro sings: “It’s in our blood, we have to ride/On the road until we die’’, kept company by droning organ and guitar. Even the chord changes are slow in coming. When they arrive it is sweet relief, like finding that lonesome desert garage when the tank is running low.

Slip The Leash is a song of escape, slowly unravelling to reveal trombone and trumpet that capture the hopeful tone of the lyric. Despite the subject matter – taking a bird out the back and doing the deed – Kill It Yourself is another song of escape.

“If you were a kelpie I’d shoot you,’’ Ribeiro delivers with a nasal twang on If You Were A Kelpie, which sits somewhere between Tony Joe White and feverish outback dream.

Despite Ribeiro’s description of the songwriting scraps she brought to the table, scribbled on the back of unopened letters and casually caught on an iPhone, her melodies are sure and uncluttered – the sweet thrills of Unfamiliar Ground; the slow swirling surf-pop of Good Day; the girl group ’60s sparkle of Strange Game.

There is always something different going on – an unexpected sax, a lush mix of throaty organ and piano, unexpected humour amid the pathos. Be ready when the rush of Kill It Yourself starts to take effect: you are going to feel like going for a long drive out of town — alone.

Noel Mengel

ROCK

Various Artists, When Sharpies Ruled

(Festival/Warner) ***

THERE is always a music scene that appeals to disaffected suburban youth tribes looking for action. Now it’s hip-hop; in the early ’70s it was raw and raunchy rock’n’roll. The sharpies, with their short-on-top-long-at-the-back hair and stomping dance style, were a mostly Melbourne thing but the music had appeal that reached to the boondocks. The best you probably already know, including ex-Easybeat Stevie Wright’s magnificent Hard Road and Skyhooks’ Horror Movie, while Supernaut’s one shot at the glam title, I Like It Both Ways, and Hush and Ted Mulry Gang also supply the hits. There are three tracks from Coloured Balls, whose high energy on stage was never really captured in the studio; while Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs revive the ‘60s (at maximum volume) with Let’s Have a Party . Some of these bands have been forgotten for good reason but the blues-powered Kevin Borich Express tracks hold up well, and La Femme’s Chelsea Kids points the way to punk’s year zero and the next wave of Australian rock’n’roll.

Noel Mengel

SOUL

Clayton Doley, Bayou Billabong

(Independent) ***1/2

As artists from John Fogerty to Little Feat have shown, the distance from home to Louisiana is never far in the imagination. The same goes for Australian organ/piano man Clayton Doley, who grew up in Adelaide but whose chief musical inspirations come from New Orleans. One of the most in-demand keys players in Australia, lately he has spent much time touring the US, which also gave him the chance to record the bulk of this album in New Orleans with local musicians. While best known for his Hammond organ work, here he also gets back to the piano for some Big Easy funk and soul. Of course the inspiration of Dr John is seldom far away, and, with a steaming New Orleans brass section and female vocal trio behind him, Doley is in his element on Disbelief and the late-night jazz flavours of Waiting For the Coffee. The musical settings are the main attraction, and fans of bands from The Meters to AWB will be impressed, but Doley is also working on his vocals and they work well on most of these self-composed tracks.

Noel Mengel

METAL

Soulfly, Archangel

(Nuclear Blast) ***

Ex-Sepultura co-founder Max Cavalera has multiple projects on the go but his core concern, Soulfly, just reached its milestone 10th album. It finds them deeper in thrash/death metal, while maintaining a melodic accessibility in line with their original vision. If the album title and cover art aren’t enough of a giveaway, song names such as Ishtar Rising,Titans and Mother of Dragons should put it beyond doubt: this is rife with religious and mythological themes. We Sold Our Souls to Metal is a more regulation yet high-energy opener. Apocalyptic battlefield trumpets punctuate the din on Bethlehem’s Blood. Sodomites roars: “The place will be littered with corpses and you will know that I alone am the Lord.” The hoarse shriek of guest vocalist Matt Young, of King Parrot, gives Live Life Hard! a punk edge and the track sports the most attitude of any on the album: “Go hard or go home/Go hard or f--- off.” If the album seems to go quickly, that’s because it clocks in at a little more than 30 minutes, with three tracks under three minutes.

John O’Brien

PERFORMANCE

Icehouse, In Concert

(Diva/Universal) ***1/2

One of the more worthy ’80s bands to do the inevitable reunion thing, Iva Davies’ Icehouse took the interesting step of releasing a live album of reggae versions of their hits 18 months ago. Now comes a double album of songs performed the traditional way on tour from late last year to early this year. The playlist spans the band’s back catalogue, from their early days as Flowers with hits such as Walls,Can’t Help Myself and We Can Get Together, to their breakthrough tunes Hey Little Girl and Don’t Believe Anymore, to peak hits such as Crazy and Electric Blue, and unofficial national anthem Great Southern Land. Davies’ voice is still in fine form and the band is so tight it is as though they never went away, the only disappointment being the mellowed-out version of Street Cafe which, while an interesting interpretation, lacks the power and impact of the original studio recording. Now, as with fellow Aussie new-wavers Models, it would be nice to hear some new material from these guys.

John O’Brien

ROOTS

The Waifs, Beautiful You

(Jarrah/MGM) ***

Over 20 years and seven albums, The Waifs have built a following with earnest, well-crafted folk-rock that is easy on the ear. The vocal harmonies and solid writing of sisters Vicki Thorn and Donna Simpson are the band’s strongest assets while guitarist-singer Josh Cunningham brings variety with his Dylanesque musings and sharp solos. Thorn, now living in the US, is in good form here with Black Dirt Track and 6000 Miles mining nostalgic images of her West Australian sun and sand upbringing in Albany. Simpson contributes the heartfelt and melodic title track, about a friend battling addiction, and the country flavoured lament When A Man Gets Down. Unfortunately she misfires on Rowena and Wallace, a cliche-ridden melodrama tracking a skateboard boy (hoody up, pants hanging down) and a “good good girl’’ who rebels and perishes along with her boyfriend. That said, Waifs fans will enjoy what is a mostly pleasant and undemanding collection.

David Costello

SOUNDTRACK

Greta Bradman, David Hobson, Lisa McCune & Teddy Tahu Rhodes, From Broadway to La Scala

(ABC Classics) ***

Before maestro Richard Bonynge recognised her potential, Australia’s new opera sensation Greta Bradman was singing a gig here, another there, sometimes an innings with a team as she does on this CD. She joins David Hobson (tenor), Lisa McCune (popular vocalist) and Teddy Tahu Rhodes (bass-baritone) for a gently harmonic Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah and You’ll Never Walk Alone from the magical musical Carousel plus The Music of the Night duo with David. Teddy gives his vocals a thorough workout in Largo al Factotum from Rossini’s Barber of Seville, David throbs Bring Him Home from Les Miserables, Lisa does a “Julie Andrews’’ in My Favourite Things from Sound of Music. There is also the obligatory but a little worn In the Depths of the Temple duo from David and Teddy. But it is the deep colours and rich qualities of Bradman’s silken voice that sets “fireworks’’ cracking in a superb Una voce poco fa from Rossini’s opera Barber of Seville, with Bonynge conducting the English Chamber Orchestra.

Patricia Kelly

Originally published as Album reviews: Fringe dweller now impossible to ignore