duckyboy Wrote:
It's more expensive at 75 cents, but I love this album:
Featuring David McComb of the Triffids and Warren Ellis of Dirty Three (though not a major role). From AMG:
Quote:
By the time of this album's release, the group's second lineup had gelled sufficiently so it felt less like an Australian alt-rock/roots supergroup and more like a joint effort. Snarski's rich vocals, which pay homage to great country crooners of the past while at the same time showing up some American "new country" singers as weak-voiced wannabes, lead the sextet in a series of heartfelt songs. His combination of rock forcefulness and just-twangy-enough brooding also suit the lyrics, courtesy mostly of Kakulas and McComb, quite well. Images of emptiness, forlorn hope, romantic bitterness, and religious iconography litter the songs, but rather than amping things up á la countryman Nick Cave, the Susans coat everything with just enough honey in the arrangements.
Such an interesting crossroads of Australian music, I always want to like this record more than I do. Still, some interesting moments for sure.
I think by this stage Dave McComb (an unappreciated fucking giant of Australian music) was too junked up to contribute a whole lot, though he pretty much wrote all of the songs, and Snarski's voice is eerily like Dave's anyway. Flicking through the liner notes, McComb only plays guitar on one song, and other than writing or co-writing every other song, does nothing else. I don't believe he played live with them much, or at all.
"Evil" Graham Lee from the Triffids plays all sorts of instruments across this record too.
Jim White's (Cat Power, Nina Nastasia, Dirty Three) drumming is always top notch, toned down and somewhat unrecognisable on this record compared to his later signature free-form brushwork; still maturing into his eventual guise as one of the best drummers of the past two decades.
This record is a must own for anyone into West Australian music, or specifically, The Triffids; an interesting curio that finds various figures of note at entirely different stages in their career. Warren Ellis, now one of the elder statesmen of Australian music thanks to his important work with the Dirty Three and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, is just a kid here. Dave McComb on the other hand, was nearing the middle of his candle after burning it at both ends for the past decade, sliding into relative obscurity (and hiding) by the early 90s, battling both a life-threatening heart condition and severe heroin addiction. He succumbed to a junk-related death just a few years later (official reports were inconclusive, noting heroin toxicity and a mild, acute rejection to his recent heart transplant). His is such a sad story.
Martyn P. Casey quit this band to join the Bad Seeds, with whom he plays to this day. Future member Dan Luscombe later played with Paul Kelly, his nephew Dan Kelly, and is now a member of the Drones (who are pretty much the only Aussie band getting attention right now that are worth it). Kim Salmon (Scientists, Beasts Of Bourbon) also spent time with the Susans. It would seem that anyone of worth in Aussie music has either played in this band or plays with people that played in this band, despite the Susans themselves never achieving much success.
I hope more than anything though, that one day Dave McComb's body of work is held in the same regard as The Saints, Radio Birdman, The Go-Betweens and The Bad Seeds as "important", pioneering Australian music. We don't have a lot of it, so it's so important to cherish what little there is.
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