Take Something Beautiful: The Songs of Jesse Younan (Various artists)
"JUST do it now, to hell with it all -- our time here ain't long, just one blink and we're gone."
"JUST do it now, to hell with it all -- our time here ain't long, just one blink and we're gone."
There's a poignancy -- and a tragic prescience -- to the songwriting that marked Jesse Younan as one of the staples of Sydney's independent music scene.
Five years after Younan's death, aged 35, from leukaemia, some of Australia's finest independent musicians have come together on Take Something Beautiful to pay tribute to the singer-songwriter with their own interpretations of his work.
The aforementioned lyric is taken from Younan's 2004 track Road Long Been Travelled, and it is covered here with powerful emotion by M. Jack Bee.
The singer resists the temptation to overplay it and delivers Younan's tune with emotional integrity. West Australian singer Abbe May opens the LP with her darkly vaudevillian version of Younan's Blowfly, while Jen Cloher continues the theme, her version of the title track haunting like a purgatorial siren.
An emotional seam runs through the album's mid-section: Greg Walker (Queeny) and Jordie Lane (Swing) do justice to Younan's moody oeuvre, while you can almost hear the lump in Jai Pyne's throat as he sings: "Well, I got this disease.
This dirty disease. It's taking me for a ride" on C'est La Vie. The album reaches its climax with Younan himself on the final track: a 2007 recording of his My Addiction.
Over sparsely picked minor chords, Younan in his grainy tenor, has the last, poignant, word: "I can feel you, but you ain't here."
Label: Source Music
Rating: 4 stars
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