Album Review: Ron S Peno & The Superstitions - Anywhere And Everything Is Bright

Under the Superstitions banner, the idiosyncratic but genuine talents of Peno are allowed to range across a variety of styles, but remain identifiably his. The high plains country keening of his Darling Downs work is mostly – though not completely – sidelined. The songs here more often come on his darker croon, still of an often melancholic longing, but delivered as part of possibly the most complementary and cradling band he's fronted since Died Pretty's finest hours.

In fact, in the jangle of the opening Say It Isn't So, the urgent Myself In Thee, and even more so as Tim Deane's rippling piano and organ entwine with Mark Dawson's distinctive softly martial drumming on Destination Unknown, DP enthusiasts will feel very comfortable.

As main collaborator and guitarist, Cam Butler seems to have helped find the balance of heart and head that lets Peno wrench the emotion from his guts, but to remember it's there to serve some very good songs, and not just fall into melodrama.

But it tends to all lead up to the final Call Your Name (To Say Goodbye) – an ebbing and flowing moody little epic with Peno's increasing desperate loss hauling the band along with him as it goes. Even the crack in his vocal as he calls “It's the time…” on the relationship seems both uncontrived but just right.