Album Review: Jane Dust & The Giant Hoopoes - Space Odyssey: Part 1

More novel than album, Space Odyssey: Part 1, from local eccentrics Jane Dust & the Giant Hoopoes, is a rip-roaring, rollicking, all-fun nine-track ride through the charming vagaries of a truly unique songwriting mind. It's a concept album, telling the, err, story of (apparently) The Creature, a shape-shifting minion from Hell, bent on destruction, but let's not get stuck in the details shall we?

There's barely been a more enjoyable record released in Melbourne in recent memory, and Dust and her cohorts are in supreme control of every element of the process. There's something of a supergroup at work here, with The Giant Hoopoes comprising Clare Moore, Stu Thomas, Will Hindmarsh and Louisa Trewartha, their long years of experience shining through from note one. And the arrangements – though world class – use horn and storytelling in an iconoclastic manner quite unlike anything you've ever heard before. There is an intoxicating impetus to the record that begins from the opening track, grabs you truly and well, and doesn't let go until the epic finale.

Comparisons to Kubrick's great work are inevitable, I suppose, and they could conceivably go something like this: Stan The Man in a Brunswick share house, booted ignominiously out of VCA, decides he wants to make music instead of film, or something. Despite this, Space Odyssey: Part 1 is alarmingly original, and deserves our sustained attention on this basis alone. There's also stunning songwriting and storytelling, assured musicianship, and, well, something like gravitas here. Given all this, we'll now await Space Odyssey: Part 2 with seriously baited breath.