Album Review: Mick Turner - Don’t Tell The Driver

Mick Turner is an inimitable force, a man whose creative legacy continues to defy and mystify. His work with Dirty Three, his artwork, his collaborative projects – all have an extraordinarily strong voice emanating from within, accentuated by that stuttering, chugging, interminable guitar.

On Don't Tell The Driver, Turner gathers a menagerie of talent to gather round his iconic world vision, a delicate yet intense experience into the gossamer sheen of one of his watercolours, and it's an album of understated grace and overblown awe. The most notable addition here is the prominence of vocals – Deadstar's Caroline Kennedy-McCracken and Oliver Mann (Over Waves) accentuating perfectly the ephemeral moments of a tumultuous love affair – whether it be with a lover, a substance, with life, or with music itself. The vague nature of the lyrics is never a sore point though – the intricate interplay of Turner's guitar with the tempered yet no less schizophrenic drums (played alternately by Kishore Ryan, Jeff Wegener and Ian Wadley), bass (Art Of Fighting's Peggy Frew) and horns is a kaleidoscopic aural journey into multiple realms, their make-up determined by the listener. Therefore the epic title track could easily be a song of hope as a song of weary defeat; Gone Dreaming feels like dour rumination but could be merely meditative (the horns shift with colour and light, never alighting on a particular emotion); The Last Song has a cathartic expulsion, yet still lingers, burbling away.

Don't Tell The Driver is a masterpiece of immersion, and like the greatest artworks, is made to get lost in.