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Leah Flanagan album review

mickdaleyo

Leah Flanagan, rapidly maturing as one of Darwin’s foremost artistic exports to the world, has released her second album, Nirvana Nights.

A tribute to the Nirvana bar, Darwin’s musician’s hangout of choice, the song Nirvana Nights, though last track on the album, is by no means the least. It showcases a voice redolent with power, control and artistry. Likewise, the voice of the first track, Goodbye, is that of a soul old beyond Flanagan’s years – knowing but not jaded, a big, endowed voice that weaves nuance through every phrase.

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Leah Flanagan bio

mickdaleyo

Hailing from Darwin might be perceived as a disadvantage, given it’s as far from Melbourne as you can be while still in the country.

But Leah Flanagan has turned it into a distinct advantage.

Flanagan sings sweetly but wields a mean ukelele – as Darwin locals will attest, she’s been playing original songs to hot-blooded acclaim since she could swing a tune, and is the darling of the tropical north.

The release of her second album, Nirvana Nights, is not a tribute to that grunge band’s nocturnal habits, but to a small, defiantly seedy bar in Darwin where everybody plays. This testament to Flanagan’s home-town sums up the tone of the album.

Which is not to say it’s small-time – this is a beautifully recorded document of Northern soul, with full-blooded melodies and Flanagan’s voice – at times channelling Shirley Bassey, at others Lucinda Williams, dominating a succulent procession of profound musicianship from some of Melbourne’s finest players – Liz Stringer, Grant Cummerford, Matt Earl, Netanela Mizrahi, Mel Robinson, Emily Lubitz and Harry Angus.

Yes, she recorded it in Melbourne, where she travels frequently to play – when she’s not in Vancouver with the Black Arm Band, Berlin at the Popkomm Festival, Woodford Folk Festival, Adelaide Fringe or wherever else in the world she’s in demand.

The album, produced by Steven Schram (The Cat Empire/Little Birdy/Custom Kings) is a robust interpretation of her onstage persona – vividly human, quiet but possessed of a formidable strength and artistry. Bristling with gorgeous melodies and the kind of wry swing you might suspect of Tom Waits or Jolie Holland, there’s also the off-kilter catch of Martha Wainwright’s emotional torrent in Flanagan’s maturing, but already well-gravelled delivery.

But her home and family are foremost authorities – her grandmother’s acute effect on Flanagan’s world is registered in both Goodbye and Alyawarre Girl, whereas Nirvana Nights, the song, stories Darwin’s small but zealously hedonistic community.

This Alyawarre girl is taking her music beyond Darwin’s embrace to a wider world. Leah Flanagan’s second album announces a woman awake.

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Three album reviews for Plateau Magazine – Alstonville

mickdaleyo

Big Low – The Junction of The Two Rivers Big Low is the vehicle of Dan Tuffy, one time member of 80’s rock outfit Wild Pumpkins At Midnight, who had an eclectic career in Australia before exporting themselves to Europe for a sustained, if addled campaign of touring. The rest of the band returned home, worn out, and Michael Turner, of Nimbin’s own Durga Babies, is a North Coast resident. Tuffy stayed in the Netherlands, however and concentrated on an eccentric country/folk strain of music. His work in Big Low with Dutchmen Michiel Hollanders and Marc Constandse features a variety of odd, archaic instruments including the Velofoon, banjo bass, bendir and bandoneon (google ‘em). The songs on this album are then, of an odd, almost whimsical folksiness (I saw them at the Yackandandah Folk festival earlier this year). Tuffy’s unabashed Australian accent sits oddly with the lilting, very European musicality of his compadres and creates a stirring vision of an older era that’s almost magic realist – a cover of country great Merle Travis’ Dark as a Dungeon, and the convict dirge My Name is Jimmy Governor set the tone. Available only through online order, you can access this through Smoked Recordings.

The Tendons – Snatches of alt-rock from three decades glisten in this restless animal, throwing off echoes of Masters Apprentices, The Church, Died Pretty and the bipolar frenetics of Eagles of Death Metal. An audacious and enterprising debut from a promising Lismore band, Cult Leader imagines the trajectory of a Messianic individual, based on the antics of an interesting existing individual, pictured on the cover. The Tendon’s are the brainchild of local boy Glenn Deaf, frontman and songwriter, whose rambunctious guitar work enshrines this unusual rock and roll adventure. Standouts are Snow 2480 and King Brown. Produced locally at Music House Studios, you can get this through Flood Records, an estimable independent Lismore record label.

The Dennis Boys – No Story to Tell The Dennis Boys are a product of the highly fecund Hunter Valley, famous for coal, stud horses and great bands. A country rock outfit consisting of four siblings and a family friend, their influences are profoundly rooted in the greats – Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Johnny Cash and Dwight Yoakam, but there’s just as much Nick Cave, White Stripes and Lucinda Williams in their roughneck ballads. Brothers Shane, Lyle and Erle provide the brawn, whilst sister Leah is the beauty, and between them they bristle with authentic guitar twang and bravado. They are the real country deal – truckdrivers, horse farriers – Erle an award-winning harmonica player and Leah a jeweller. Lyle does most of the singing, and his authentic vocal growl easily carries opener The Right Kind, while Leah’s Falling For Me provides some of that Patsy Cline sass. Shane’s Hurts Too Much hits a poignant note – this a truly tender and beautiful song from the clan elder and contrasts deftly with the raunch and swagger of the albums general tone. Just released through Newcastle’s Rack Off Records, this album’s getting a lot of attention.

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The Re-Mains press release and bio for Inland Sea album launch

mickdaleyo

The Re-mains fourth album, Inland Sea, might have taken them three years to get out, but it hasn’t been for want of action. Since Love’s Last Stand, their 2006 live album   earned four stars from Rolling Stone, they’ve had a near fatal mash-up with a cow in the Northern Territory, two massive Canadian tours and enough line-up changes to put the Melbourne Hit Men Association to shame.

“We started recording early in 2007, then went on tour to the Territory and had the ‘meat tray’ incident,” says frontman/manager Mick Daley.

“Grunter Bedford and Ramshackle Dave Ramsey were horribly maimed and out of action after that. It took a while to get back into gear. Me and Tom Jones Jnr (bassplayer) were kind of freewheelin’ around with different line-ups, including Louis Tillet on piano one New Years Eve in Maitland, till Shaun (Uncle Burnin’ Love) Butcher came back from winning his bout with cancer, and took up the banjo again.”

Revitalised, the band did some more recording, at Christian Pyle’s Lot 61 Studios in Goonengerry, in the Byron Bay hinterland. Then they hightailed it to Canada in ‘08, for en epic four-month tour involving an $800 Chevy van, 16,000 kilometres, nationally broadcast breakfast TV and 65 shows from Vancouver to Toronto and back again. The rest of that year was spent back on the road in Australia, then in 2009 they did it all again, clocking up another 18,000 k’s and adding a circumnavigation of the Rockies with Canadian outlaw folkie Dr Joey Only to their carbon footprint.

Back in Australia, they finished the album, at last, and set about getting it out themselves, following the demise of their label, Croxton Records. They were rescued by Austrade, which awarded them an export development grant, in the nick of time to salvage their debts – and pay Christian Pyle.

Daley has high praise for Pyle, who had his own winning bout with the big C whilst engineering and playing on the album, twice.

“CP is a genius. He takes my rambling ballads and crafts them into … well, something else, something a lot more considered and refined. He also plays a mean guitar, invents most of his gear from scratch and laughs at conventional wisdom, about scales, recording, everything really.”

“We had a Canadian version of this album first. Then when we came back, I asked him to do it all over again, ‘cos I wanted different songs on the Australian version. It’s lucky we’re mates, I’ve seen him, er, react differently to similar requests.”

It’s more produced than previous albums, which were basically tracked live, to get the bands edgy attack authentically.

“This one has the same energy, but more overdubbing and fairy dust. It’s a big sound, a dash of 3D.

“It’s got road songs from Canada and more laments about lost love and loneliness, as well as my favourite, an epic about Pumulwuy, the great Koori warrior, and Who Shot Johnny D? a murder ballad from Nimbin.”

This winter the band is taking Inland Sea on the road south and west, way west.

Well Melbourne and Sydney and Darwin of course,” Daley says. “Then we’re headed out to Bourke, via Brewarrina, Cobar, Coonamble, back where it all started.”

The Re-Mains were renowned as the hardest driving independent band in the country when they first started their country rock and roll crusade in 2002. They boasted that they’d played more rodeos, outback dives and inner city hellholes than any other band in Australia. Splendour in the Grass, Six Tamworth Country Music Festivals, five East Coast Blues and Roots, three Darwin Festivals, Woodford Folk, Nymagee Outback fest, Nimbin Mardi Grass, (see sizzle sheet) and every other bush bash they could reach. Four albums, two EPs and more drummers than Spinal Tap. Banjos, pedal steel and balls to the wall country rock and roll.

They travelled where most East Coast outfits feared to tread, to the wildest outback pubs, where it was not uncommon to see heads go through plate glass windows while they played.

“There’s nothing like the sound of a banjo at full throttle to get some of those country blokes revved for a blue. And even the 3am emos at the Pony in Melbourne warm to it after a few songs.”

Their Canadian tours included shows at NXNE, NewMusic West, the Calgary Stampede and nine other national festivals, their compilation album reached Number 13 on the Alberta CBC radio charts and they appeared twice on breakfast TV. But they reserve their highest praise for Curtis, their Chevy conversion van.

‘$800 in Vancouver, we jumped in, drove him straight over the Rockies. He threw a starter motor in Calgary and lost his exhaust early, so everywhere we went we sounded like a Panzer battalion on the attack. We scared bears all over Canada. But that van kept going, two tours in Canada and we left him in Vancouver with Dr Joey Only, who killed him in a week.”

With the aid of Austrade they’re returning to Canada next year – meanwhile this year it’s all about the Inland Sea – and avoiding cows.

The Re-Mains are –

Mick Daley – management, songwriting, guitars, harmonica, singing.

Shaun Butcher – songwriting, banjo, electric guitars, singing.

Tom Jones – bass

Al Fisk – drums, singing.

And occasionally, Christian Pyle – electric guitars.

The Re-Mains at Australian festivals;

Splendour in the Grass (‘03), East Coast Blues and Roots, (x5) Tamworth Country Music Festival (x7), Woodford Folk Festival (‘04), Darwin Festival (x3), St Kilda Festival (‘04), Big Note Festival, Swan Hill (x2), Mullumbimby Festival (‘02) The Herb Festival, Lismore (x2), Brisbane Beer Festival (‘04), Barkly Arts Festival, NT (’05), Surfing the Coldstream, Yamba (x2), Casino Beef Week (x3), Two Rivers Festival, Gunnedah (‘05), Mt Isa Rodeo (‘04), Litchfield Rodeo (‘06), Gold Coast Rodeo (‘07), The Puppet Rodeo, Kyogle (‘06), Gove Peninsula Festival NT, (‘06),  Wagga Wagga Unsound Festival (‘05), The Gumball, Hunter Valley (x2), Candelo Festival (‘07), Wallaby Creek Festival, FNQ (’05), Yagubi Festival, Hervey Bay (‘05), The Mad Hatter Regatta, Albury (‘05), Blues and Tattoos Bike Show, Maitland (‘06), Kingaroy Peanut Festival (‘06), Long Flat Bike Rally (‘05) Big Sunday, Tyalgum (‘07), Mazstock, Lismore (’07) Yackandandah Folk Festival (‘10), Cool Summer Festival, Mt Hotham (‘10).

The Re-Mains at Canadian Festivals;

North by North East, Toronto (‘08), New Music West, Vancouver (‘08), Big Valley Jamboree, Alberta (‘08), Ness Creek Festival, Saskatchewan (‘08, ‘09), North Country Fair, Alberta (‘08), Gateway Festival, Sask (‘08), Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival, BC (‘08), Winlaw Music Festival, BC (‘09), Kitchener Blues Festival, Ontario (‘09),  Sled Island, Alberta (‘09).

Recipients of two Australia Council touring grants and an

Austrade Export Development Grant – current for seven years.

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Review of Ghost Mountain’s 2010 album Art Without Audience

mickdaleyo

Being a musician is about considerably more than playing an instrument. It’s about a life moved by artistic vision and emotion – a fraught word in the modern era. Like that other, highly nuanced casualty of the lexicon, ‘gay’, it’s been forced into an entirely other set of pants. Emotion in its truncated, graffitoed form has been circumscribed to those youth who feel that shanghiing the Goth credo is not enough, that as sole inheritors of genuine sorrow the emos need to annex it for their own private kingdom. But Ghost Mountain ain’t letting go of it.

This band’s lives are a subterranean mine of emotion, roiling and tectonically shifting beneath the amaranthine hills of the Byron hinterland. And where it breaks the surface, that’s where you’ll find Art Without Audience.

Engineered, produced and finessed in his usual inimitable style by co-founding member Christian Pyle (CP), this record is then broken down by Sal Yates, the other half of the equation. Sal’s voice, enormous, vulnerable, glorying in power and range, is as laden with the E word as was Johnny Cash’s in another realm entirely, so tightly woven with tantalising promise, searing passion and aching despair that every phrase sounds like a psalm from the Old Testament.

Arm that voice with CP’s masterful, deft and unrestrained knowledge of an electric guitars possibilities, and you indeed have high art, albeit aloof and oblique, grounded in high misty hills and constant, tropical rain. It’s my contention in fact that the mountain is question is music itself, and the ghost is the ephemeral, shifting emotion that haunts it.

Drummer Nick Edin and bassist Eben McCrimmon are adept interpreters of the raging and temperamental songs on this, the second album from the band. Two years in the making, it’s a potent mix of their signal slant on rock and roll with a determined and steady artistic vision. Envenomed at turns with Bryson Mulholland’s coruscating keys and CP’s own bristling voice, the result is a glittering treasury of blazing ardour and wilful collapse.

From the stately timbre of Government Arms to the Crazy Horse guitar tirade of I’m Gonna Face You, there’s a ruthless spectrum of styles lurching through the eleven songs. Delving into electro-pop with Everythings OK, the Mountaineers also tackle brooding alt-rock in Started a Fire, while Capsized Moon is as lilting and yearnful as Don’t Make Me Wait is majestic.

Easy Does It is a standout, not because I have an undeserved credit, but because of its simple melody and poised, sanguine lyric. The lover who sings ‘You swine, I’m coming to get you’, is the same who on Animal declares, “I’m not your animal, you’re not worth dying for”, and hexes exes when In Spite of Me shudders in full spate with “I’m getting over the game … taking time to write the lies that you breathe …”. She’s also the temptress who promises “If you really wanted this could be your song”, in Capsized Moon.

Like Ghost Mountain’s previous work, this album is more about subtle and dark than user-friendly. There’s few concessions to idiocy and the banal will slope away, unmoved. But if you like to tap into raw emotion and the elliptical truth of unfettered art, you’ll find closer The Whole compelling and its hot-tempered jealousy a door slamming on a volatile, irresistible album. Like a spurned lover, you’ll be hanging at the back windows, peering into that murky light.