Augie March – Moo, You Bloody Choir

Two years since it was finished and eighteen months after its original Australian release (don’t you just love record company shenanigans), the third full length effort from Augie March hits the streets in the UK. In the mean time it’s been picking up awards left, right and centre in their homeland. After allowing a few days to pass since the events of last Saturday in Cardiff, my anti-Oz prejudice has now subsided enough for an impartial review. My ‘in depth research’ noted that they have supported Wilco in Australia and are about to do the same for the Crowded House reunion tour. It’s a convenient simplification, but split the difference and you might just have a blurred snapshot resembling Augie March. Anyone approaching from either of those two directions will find something to enjoy here. Sometime piano-centric Outback-tinged rock and lyrical depth wed to a knack for a gorgeous melody and antipodean inflection. I can also report that they’re named after The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow – whose literary style singer/songwriter Glenn Richards aspires too.

If anything, big Australian hit “One Crowded Hour” might give a first impression that is just a bit too syrupy for some, with its gentle guitar and candlelit cooing, but the early wordplay of “If love is a bolt from the blue/ Then what is that bolt but a glorified screw?” hints at the well crafted songs to come. My only complaint is that, with no actual CD and lyric sheet to hand, dense verses often fly by too quickly or too low in the mix to stick. But what immediately hits home are the magnificent melodies of “The Cold Acre” and, possible favourite, “Bottle Baby” with its naked acoustic guitar and voice of a man about to crack. In fact it would be easier to list those songs without a winning hook.

There are references-a-plenty to local Melbourne sights and history (the speaking statue protagonists of “Bolte And Dunsten Talk Youth” are former premiers of Victoria) and “Thin Captain Crackers” even imagines Ned Kelly riding into town (though probably not playing the featured banjo as he does so), but these and all other pointers are veiled and cryptic. Richards prefers misdirection and possible personal re-interpretation. As he has said: “As usual there’s nothing you can directly glean, because I’m not a very literal songwriter. I’m just hoping that imagery will suffice” and, as he sings on “Clockwork”, “But I didn’t write this song with a machine / And I don’t know how to stop it from its accidental purpose.” The first line of that couplet is also very true – this is an organic act in the very style of The Band indeed. It’s well produced, but not overly so, and maintains a wistful big sky freshness that I’m determined to coin ‘Billabong rock’ until the label sticks (or I get kicked out of TLOBF – all bets are off as to which will occur first). Variation is to be found with “The Honey Month” – beginning as it does with a funereal Dixieland march and the chimes of distant church bells; keeping that languid tempo with brushed drums and whispered vocals. By contrast, this leads into the driving fuzzy rocker “Just Passing Through”. Later, “The Baron Of Sentiment” is a jovial stumble resembling a solo Ronnie Lane, and there’s the comparative weirdness of the brooding seven minute epic “Clockwork”, sprawling from sparse beginnings to include radio static and haunted house string arrangements: “Oh singer / I don’t believe your song or your lying eyes“.

After all this I was astonished to find out that they’ve still got day jobs. Is there no justice? The drummer for instance works as a car park attendant and if you annoy him he has a nice little trick: pouring milk under your foot mats – you’ll have no idea where the smell is coming from. But anyway, this is a beautiful and noble record. Sometimes overt beauty in music pales into boredom, but it hasn’t happened to me yet, and there are still more of those lyrics to discover and digest. They’re from Melbourne, so Aussie rules? (See what I did there?).
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Links
Augie March [official site] [myspace]