Is New Song From The Preatures The Beginning Or End Of The Band?

Somewhere on the line from creation to keeping control things might go a bit amiss. Or the balance might get a bit confused. The Preatures’ new tune – the first after the album and since Gideon Bensen’s much-mentioned exit from the lineup – has been kicking around for a few weeks, but has really only had the visuals to go with the sounds for the last week or so. Now, I Know A Girl (Mercury) has plenty going for it: not the least that it’s a move away from what almost becoming a formula – save me from that damn double-speed strum they seemed to use on every damn song from Is This How You Feel on – to an almost old new-wavey style, with a nice twist to bitch in the last verse. And, shallow as it might seem, you’ve got a band that looks right delivering it, naturally including Isabella Manfredi - fucking stunning vocalist, and fucking stunning with it. But part of the charm was these good looking kids were often pictured mooching about in op-shop t-shirts and comfy boots rather than designer styled. And all’s going well in this, as we observe them in the creative process in one of those suitably frayed and scruffy warehouse creative spaces in Surry Hills. But then we seem to have lost the band, and find Izzy with the hair and make-up (over) done, with just enough buttons undone on the suitably unstructured blouse. This may be a record company acting like record always have, and getting the ‘look’ and ‘focus’ right, but whether this does or undoes the band remains to be seen.

One antithesis to such an overstudied approach, comes with Sharon Van Etten’s newest. Not Myself (Jagjaguwar) is essentially her raw reaction to the horror of the Orlando shootings from a few weeks back. She’s bled her feelings straight out, making for sparse and haunted thing, that almost seems to be coming from someone in genuine shock – which many may well be. It’s a charity song without the often empty contrived feeling songs to a boy down a well can have in their design to separate you from your credit card number.    

Or there’s just something coming with a natural candidness. A conversation of some wit and smarts, but with a lightness in touch and not much self-consciousness. Coming Of Age (Liberation) is Julia Jacklin just having a honest chat with you, jaunty without being cloying. Positive, without sounding like those aphorisms you read on a desk calendar or that get posted by those two-degrees-of-separation ‘friends’ on Facebook, usually illustrated with a meme of a cat nearly falling out of a tree. Ms Jacklin’s songs have the askance and quiet charm of a New Zealand artist who’s likely to end up being claimed by Australia when she becomes successful. 

Sometimes a voice is maybe altogether unnecessary. Perth’s Elise Higgins, under her Fait banner makes music suitable for soundtracks of movies yet to be made. The trick with ‘songs’ like Reverie (Inertia) is that she somehow infuses her work with an emotion in its wordlessness. Making it suitable both as mood-setting sounds to visuals of rain-swept streets, or to hold the attention of an audience sitting cross-legged drinking goon under fairylights in one of those fashionably decaying warehouses as mentioned above.

Lachlan Duthie is another who’s decided he needs another name to better deliver what he wants to. Now as River Blue, his previously fairly minimal acoustic rootsy/folkie style gets filled a bit more, happily referencing everything from Springsteen (good) to Mumford (not so much…) with a rolling melodicism to a song like Iron Rivers (Independent) and its endless train track, which may well find him a place on certain community radio stations and festival programmes. 

The blokes of Shrapnel have a variety of histories of bands from levels ranging from “just a bit of fun” to “just close to getting on Triple J”. Names like Day Ravies and Dollar Bar among them you may (or may not…) recognise.  Another Year (Coolin’ By Sound) is strong, the guitars chopping insistently at you in a slightly grumpy and weary march, which fits well with their inner-west of Sydney natural habitat, which they reinforce with visuals shot on the mean streets of Dulwich Hill, calling in a few mates and a few favours for the video to made on a budget of roughly nil. Oh OK, maybe at the cost of a couple of slabs.

Postblue are another workmanlike guitar band, their neatly-wrought racket well illustrated on Love To Praise You (Rare Finds) where there’s some psychedelic-ish meanderings, mixed with feedback and reverb drenched noise which can unashamedly be traced to anything from The Pixies to Oasis. And if you’re referencing the likes of those without embarrassing yourself, things aren’t too bad. And they’re not. I hope the clip comes prefaced with the Chiko Roll ad I just got, coz that kind of fits too.

And finally, a bloke who has been doing it since Jesus played fullback for Jerusalem, or thereabouts. Van Morrison has often not been kind to his own heritage and history, with sidetracks and (particularly) live performances that have taxed the faithful, let alone the casually interested. But sometimes he can just walk in a suit, hat pulled down, and just have it tumble out so naturally, you’d think you were listening to something from 1972. Too Late (Exile/Caroline) has such relaxed grace, and the old bastard makes it appear so easy it’s close to irritating. Old school, old style, no god, just sweet Celtic soul music.