Album Review: The Dark Horses - Everyone’s Alone

The title is almost counter-intuitive, as while this is a group of some very individual individuals, Tex Perkins – whose name used to be up there on the marquee for the decade he/they have used varieties of the moniker – has been determined in announcing here he's just a part of the band, all part of the musical enterprise as a collective.

Just to further contradict, the man most involved in songwriting with Perkins, Murray Paterson, is happiest as a kind of associate member – leaving the 'grind' of the live touring thing to the grizzled road warriors of the group. As suggested, Everyone's Alone changes that a bit, too. Their previous tour allowed the band to work up these songs together, rather than just adding their adept contributions around the frameworks brought to them.

This doesn't substantially alter the typical reflecting-through-not-the-first-glass ponderings on the stumbles of life and/or love offered, but in places it might just fit together a bit more naturally. A snippet of Charlie Owen just-quietly-dirty-enough guitar or a Gus Agars' weary martial beat punctuating one of Perkins' dryly sodden observations, as if to give him (or you) the point to rise from the armchair, and head to the icebox to freshen that beverage.

In their arc, Everyone's Alone might follow on from the previous then-eponymous Tex Perkins & The Dark Horses album, which dealt with the immediate aftermath of her leaving, to the more philosophical acceptance of her absence in songs here like Stay Where You Are. Who Do You Think You Are?, is asked at one point. This album can give you the feeling these blokes know as much – or as little – as you do.