Augie
March
MOO,
YOU BLOODY CHOIR
It's
never easy to pinpoint exactly where Augie March are coming
from, but it's abundantly clear where they're not. They're a
band apart from the nowhere music that's everywhere and maybe
a century or two removed from the desperate bang and chatter
of the vapid pop/ rock zeitgeist. See, in a world gone mad with
window-dressing, Augie March actually make stuff. Their albums
are leather bound volumes on a shelf groaning with tatty magazines.
They're the old family roast joint across the street from the
plastic strip mall takeaway. And singer-songwriter Glenn Richards
is a real live poet with a six-stringed loom. The guy doesn't
even dance. "Poems used to be called songs," he says, by way
of describing his general motivation. "I'm very keen on the
idea of bringing that full circle. I love the way words can
move together and I guess I find music a natural vehicle for
that."
Moo, You Bloody Choir is Augie March's third album. It may be
that you're still swimming in the prismatic wordplay and intriguing
sonic details of their ecstatically acclaimed Sunset Studies
(2000) and Strange Bird (2002) albums, but neither disposability
nor immediate transparency are high among this Melbourne band's
strengths. So sue them. Or lend an ear.
'One Crowded Hour', the song that sets the scene quoted above,
is a typically loaded invitation into Augie March's world. It
spins from a gentle finger-picked waltz into an epic melodrama
piled high with layers of fleeting joy and dashed hope, all
gathering spin under some drunken mirror ball. Who are those
silver-spoon boys and green-eyed harpies? The longer you stare,
the more familiar they seem. 'Victoria's Secrets' unravels in
a similar fashion, not like a magic eye gimmick in a magazine,
but like an old painting in a public building that questions
ancient characters under 21st century light.
'Thin Captain Crackers'? 'The Baron of Sentiment' ? Are they
Dickensian caricatures, dry biscuits or some half-imagined pub
in Carlton? 'Bolte and Dunstan' are covered in ancient pigeon
poop, but they're still talking in murmurs to suited commuters
rushing the streets of Melbourne. "I wrote quite a lot of these
songs when I was living in East Melbourne, that old money area,"
says Glenn. "'Thin Captain Crackers' was literally looking from
the window of my bedsit onto the main street, then imagining
Ned Kelly riding up the street. "'Bolte and Dunstan Talk Youth'
is the walk up Hotham Street where I used to live, through the
gardens, into the State Library, past the statues of the premiers."
And the local late opener, the Exford Hotel? "Actually the album
was gonna be called The Exford Dregs." As the prospect of a
mooing choir might suggest, not everything is what it seems
or how it sounds on this extraordinary record. The soft, opiated
groove of 'Stranger Strange' throws a disturbing light on the
junkie kids begging "shrapnel and smokes" on the banks of the
Yarra. The jaunty feel of 'Cold Acre' is an odd choice for a
song that plays in death's revolving door.
That'll be the suitably oblique interpretive skills of Edmondo
Ammendola (bass), Adam Donovan (guitars, keys), Kiernan Box
(keyboards, string and horn arrangements) and David Williams
(drums, percussion). Between them lies the languorous, Gershwin-esque
swing of 'The Honey Month'; the driven, distorted rock of 'Just
Passing Through'; the Dylanesque folk of 'Bottle Baby' and the
country lilt of 'Mother Greer'.
In
between commitments with Big Heavy Stuff, Knievel and others
Nick found time for the odd rendezvous with Rob, who brought
a kit bag of wide-eyed hope, old but unbroken guitar strings
and half-finished songs to a now-demised Tempe rehearsal studio.
Soon enough moving to more salubrious lodgings, in 2002 they
collared David Trumpmanis (with whom each had worked on BHS
and Cowspanker recordings) after a Centipede practice and demanded
he join the band and play whatever instrument or device he saw
fit. Todd Sparrow was born and in September 2002 we started
tracking at Spacejunk (run by the Church's Tim Powles) with
Dave at the controls.
By
this time Nick, an idle loafer of a man, was only playing with
The Cops, The Forresters, Centipede and doing session work,
in addition to the ever-beloved BHS and sometime appearances
with Knievel, all which was merely yang to his yin of daily
6am yoga sessions, midwinter ocean swims and a full time job.
So as you can imagine Sparrow time was as thin and precious
as a Hollywood starlet. Somehow, though, we managed finish cooking
the 10 Spacejunk tracks in bedrooms and sheds around inner western
Sydney, with help from many friends including the incredible
Sophie Glasson playing cello and the gorgeous Tanith Sherman
with her angel's voice. Only one thing was missing and Nick
had the answer. Eliot Fish was roped in by his BHS bandmate
in 2003, laying down bass on all the tracks in a single jawdropping
take, then the four of us hit the studio again to record 9 brand
new songs, live and loose and rusty and lusty.
Moo,
You Bloody Choir was recorded in Melbourne, San Francisco and
the band's own Second World studio in Nagambie in country Victoria.
It was variously produced by Australian studio legend Paul McKercher,
by Captain Beefheart/ PJ Harvey alumnus Eric Drew Feldman, and
by Augie March , and was mixed by Mark Howard (Time Out Of Mind
- Bob Dylan). Its inspiration spanned from St Kilda ('Clockwork')
to Hobart ('Mt. Wellington Reverie'), but possibly not during
the millennium you're standing in, and not in any way that an
expensive video shoot will render obvious. "I guess I could
be guilty of being anachronistic with the kinda themes of some
of these songs," Glenn admits, "but a general idea is to tie
a notion of the historical to the contemporary: 'Why do we have
this society that we have right now?' That idea interests me
somehow. "As usual there's nothing you can directly glean,"
he says with an almost apologetic laugh, "because I'm not a
very literal songwriter. I'm just hoping that imagery will suffice."
The album's climactic, string-woven epic, 'Clockwork', perhaps
puts that another way: "O but I didn't write this song with
a machine, And I don't know how to stop it from its accidental
purpose." If that kind of imagery doesn't suffice, well, there's
always those nonsense bars with their nowhere music...
