(Part 1 of a project to go alphabetically through my CD collection and, for each letter, write about an artist/band represented by a single CD…in the process dusting off some old gems, interrogating the nature of fandom, musing about rock and roll careers, etc. etc.)
How could I not like a band named after a Saul Bellow novel? I’m not even that big a Saul Bellow fan (of what Martin Amis called the Great Jews I prefer Roth, Malamud, Elkin) but hey, you had me at literary reference…
This would be a great song even if the band was named after a Harold Robbins novel. It starts out silent for the first five seconds, then into a sort of Jeff Buckley “Hallelujah” introduction with just vocal/guitar, and then after the first chorus the band comes in and the thing just builds from there to a melancholy/ebullient carnival-esque swirl. The vocal recedes as the music seems to sweep up the singer and the listener. I defy you not to be swaying along by the time the final chorus hits. (That’s a lot of “sw” words in one paragraph.)
What’s it all about? I truly have no idea. Memory indicated a celebration of sudden renewed attraction, falling back in love with someone you’ve been in love with for a long time, per the fantastic chorus:
But for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin
However, a closer look at subsequent verses (whose words you can barely hear in the mix and so I never paid much attention) suggests other interpretations: falling in love with someone you’ve considered just a friend (and apparently getting them pregnant), listening to familiar band and being reminded why you became a fan in the first place, an homage to Australian history and heritage (that last comes from the London Guardian).
The lyrics are so obscure and random none of these fully work, so I’ll stick with my initial impression and acknowledge I’ll never know why exactly falling back in love with someone the singer has been in love with for a long time has led to his wreck and ruin. It’s usually worked for me!
Why didn’t I become a fan? Because the rest of the album is SO BORING. None of the other songs have this song’s dynamics. None of the other songs have dynamics. They are all midtempo, wordy aural dust (I stole that phrase but can’t remember from whom, probably Greil Marcus). Listening again this week I found my mind dependably wandering by the fourth song in, same as back in 2007.
Augie March is from Australia, and this song was a huge hit for them over there in 2006, winning various awards. They struggled with their record company and producers and each other trying to match that success for a followup album and the experience was so unpleasant (or sales of the followup so disappointing) they broke up for five years. They got back together in 2014 and have released three albums since, none of which seem to have US releases though you can find them on Spotify. All three seem to have been roundly ignored by the music press (at least I couldn’t find any reviews, maybe there are some in Australian newspapers).
So will this — a preference for toiling in obscurity versus laboring in the spotlight — turn into a pattern with these Newsome one-CD wonders? Tune in next time to see!