I am reminded of the words of one critic upon reviewing Joseph Heller’s maddeningly magnificent mind-fuck of a novel, Catch-22. In what was intended as an insult but to me feels like an affirmation of Heller’s approach the comment was made that it seemed “not so much written as shouted onto a page”.
I am reminded of the words of one critic upon reviewing Joseph Heller’s maddeningly magnificent mind-fuck of a novel, Catch-22. In what was intended as an insult but to me feels like an affirmation of Heller’s approach the comment was made that it seemed “not so much written as shouted onto a page”.
http://www.myspace.com/garethliddiard http://www.konkurrent.nl
On the opening track Blondin Makes an Omelette Gareth Liddiard tells the tale of the famous 19th Century wire-walker’s feat of traversing across Niagara from the viewpoint of a sometime understudy and acolyte of the dare-devil. It could almost be seen as an allegory of the album project itself. Liddiard is more normally found as the leader of Aussie rock outfit ‘The Drones’. It isn’t too much of a stretch to interpret lines such as ‘I ain’t here because he’s tall/ I’m just here to see him fall’ as reflecting the thoughts of an erstwhile bassist or drummer when their band’s lead singer heads off to be the new Bob Dylan. (Although I probably shouldn’t stretch the point as one of those band members is his missus and his manager).
More fundamentally, though, the tracks subject matter can be read as a metaphor for the stripped-back and exposed nature of the album. Liddiard is, like the titular wire-walker, without a safety-net. With no band behind him he presents his songs stripped back to just his voice and his acoustic guitar. Possibly due to the inherent limitations of such minimal accompaniment the tracks have an extraordinary lyrical density. Whilst I mentioned Dylan earlier (and such lyricism is reminiscent of Zimmerman, especially on the title track) a more relevant comparator would be that other great American outsider – Tom Waits. As with much of Waits’ work the focus is on the narrative. At points Liddiard abandons the traditional verse-chorus structure instead presenting what are essentially prose-poems set to music and told with a delivery that falls somewhere between singing, shouting and mumbling. So, for example, the titular subject of High Plains Mailman spends his time reading the mail he is due to deliver and thus the song is really a series of vignettes and his (and Liddiard’s) musings upon them. The vocals work precisely because of his thick Australian brogue, in the same way that the idiosyncratic voices of Dylan or Waits are at the centre of why their work has an impact.
I am reminded of the words of one critic upon reviewing Joseph Heller’s maddeningly magnificent mind-fuck of a novel, Catch-22. In what was intended as an insult but to me feels like an affirmation of Heller’s approach the comment was made that it seemed “not so much written as shouted onto a page”. Similarly, in what is meant as a compliment (of sorts) but probably reads as an insult it seems that Strange Tourist was not so much written and performed as spewed onto a record.
There is a tendency for some of the tracks to feel overlong but not, oddly, the longest of the lot, the 16 minute swan-song The Radicalisation of D. Nominally about Aussie Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks the song is half narrative, half litany with the piling up of incidents and images building in intensity even as his voice appears to break. The denouement takes us to the attack on the Twin Towers, a suitably stark image with which to leave such a caustic piece of work.