Deborah Conway is out with the new, in with the old

Australian rock diva Deborah Conway has released another powerful and stonking album with partner Willy Zygier and she’s taking it on the road.

Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier will perform their new album at Sydney Opera House in June.

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Australian rock diva Deborah Conway has released another powerful and stonking album with musical and life partner Willy Zygier.

Recorded live to capture the band’s in-the-moment chemistry, The Words of Men on the MGM label deals with politics, life on the road, drugs, love and passion and growing older, all with a fierce creativity and a strong dose of self-deprecating humour and healthy scepticism.

It also marks the 25th anniversary of their first collaboration, Bitch Epic, with its signature tune Alive and Brilliant, and the couple are touring Australia with a show that intercuts the new material with songs from that classic album.

Zygier’s trademark resonator guitar – sometimes with bottleneck other times without – Hugh Blanes’ keyboards and the driving stand-up bass of Simon Starr and Niko Schauble’s drums provide the backdrop to the nine tracks, aided by backing vocals from the Zygier girls Syd, Alma and Hettie.

HUMAN

Conway and Zygier started writing the songs while they were house-sitting “a slightly decrepit old mansion” for friends, and they were revised, reworked and finished off over an intensive 10 days at painter Arthur Boyd’s remote property at Bundanon in Shoalhaven.

“We have very human concerns and we wanted to make a record that sounds human, with creaks and breaths and joy and passion,” Conway said.

They’ve succeeded brilliantly. Lyrics are strong, brutally honest, darkly political and at times confrontational. But Conway has always had a strong line in self-deprecating humour – in Don’t You Forget Me she muses “What can an old lady sing/If it’s not Only The Beginning/I give you a piece of my heart/What else to impart/On this well worn path”.

And the chorus best sums up what her loyal fans think about her: “Don’t you forget me, you won’t regret me, I’ll still sing if you let me, Let’s drink to getting old”.

This is a vibrant and cohesive album – there don’t seem to be any weak tracks that I could find. The band is amazingly tight, Starr’s stand-up bass reminding this reviewer of the great Danny Thompson. These songs, alongside such classics from Bitch Epic as Consider This, Today I Am A Daisy and Madame Butterfly Is In Trouble, should make a show that’s hard to forget.

Conway and Zygier appear at Sydney Opera House Studio on Friday, June 7, and Saturday, June 8, at 7.30pm.

The Words of Men is available from JB Hi-Fi for $24.99.