Wagons: Acid Rain and Sugar Cane (Spunk)

 |   |  <1 min read

Wagons: Search the Streets
Wagons: Acid Rain and Sugar Cane (Spunk)

The wide sonic sweep, aggregation of poetic images and ragged-swagger of Australia's Henry Wagons – here back with a band, and guests – gets the producer he deserves for this: Mick Harvey of the Bad Seeds.

If anyone understands tumbling lyrics and melodramatic music delivered with menace it's a man who has worked with Nick Cave, to whom Wagons owes quite some debt. As he does to rockabilly, mid-period Captain Beefheart, Johnny Cash, Tex Perkins, Lee Hazlewood, Springsteen and cheap liquor.

Yet out of this mash of influences Wagons mostly steers his own course, although at his most theatrical (the dramatic Why Do You Always Cry?) you wonder if he's aiming more for Broadway than the barroom.

And when two influences implode – Cave and Springsteen on Search the Streets – he doesn't rise above the references.

Better are the brooding ballads (the well observed Never Gonna Leave with ringing pedal steel from Matt Kelly of City and Colour's touring band) and given the prevalence of booze references these songs may be best enjoyed down'n'dirty and live.

We'll find out in August when they play the Tuning Fork (29th) and Leigh Sawmill (30th)

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Kurt Shanks: Blood Line Heart (Plus1/Aeroplane)

Kurt Shanks: Blood Line Heart (Plus1/Aeroplane)

At a crucial point in the lovely Auckland-located ballad These Are The Days, the mood drops, hooking you with intimacy, and Kurt Shanks speak-sings, “No, I don't desire any sales pitch... > Read more

Various Artists: And Now A Word From Our Sponsor (Frenzy)

Various Artists: And Now A Word From Our Sponsor (Frenzy)

What a remarkable line-up of local talent on this CD: from singer Pat McMinn and jazz pianist Crombie Murdoch in the Fifties through Larry's Rebels, Dinah Lee, Ray Woolf, Hogsnort Rupert, Tommy... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Maria Ana Bobone: Fado and Piano (Arc Music)

Maria Ana Bobone: Fado and Piano (Arc Music)

Quite why this fado singer and pianist would break the elegant and stately mood of her otherwise acoustic album with a live electronica piece which seems to channel the spirit of Clannad/Enya is... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . CHAPPAQUA: Ornette, Ravi and Rooks at a strange crossroad

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . CHAPPAQUA: Ornette, Ravi and Rooks at a strange crossroad

Think: What if you made a movie -- your personal story of an emotional and dependency struggle -- so very dear to your heart. But no one went to see it? Now maybe here's perhaps something... > Read more