The Gin Club
Deathwish
(Plus One)
I want to write something about commonality here.
The whole reason why the fourth album from Brisbane’s own Gin Club works so well is because of the camaraderie, the harmony, the cohesion. Songs are chapters in books are echoes of drunken arguments are stabs at honest dénouements are finely edited stories are breathtaking slices of multi-layered musical beauty. Disparate voices pick up the trail from other owners at various points, but the feeling of cohesion never stops, not for a moment. Where the previous Gin Club outing, 2008’s monster 26-song set Junk, splurged and binged, heady with its own sprawling potential, Deathwish is almost brutal in its brevity – and that’s one of its main strengths. Someone has reined this most gig-wise of bands in.
Deathwish might not look so brief on paper: 13 songs spread out over 40 minutes, few aspiring to the length of a 70s punk song (two minutes). This isn’t punk. This is music intended to be inclusive: warm and enveloping and concerned above all with the fine arts of storytelling and songwriting. Consider also the fact there are 10 songwriters present, most with their own distinct voice (both singing and musical). And these songwriters like to chop and change around on instruments (cello, strings, guitars, percussion, keyboards, mandolins, pedal steels… you get the idea), as anyone familiar with The Gin Club’s chaotic but intimate live shows will attest.
And yet, one of the most striking aspects of Deathwish is that everything hangs together so well: like an album from the mists of rock made by one of those bearded groups that liked to board trains and go touring America for months on end (The Band, or Canned Heat, or Flying Burrito Brothers, say), the music gels so brilliantly because it has been played out so often. Discussed and had many drinks quaffed over, and ceased long ago to be a mere exercise in putting voice and instruments and melodies and rhythm together. Like The Triffids and The Drones before them, The Gin Club have worked in an additional aspect to their music – the sort of feeling years spent in a studio simply can’t attain. The Gin Club make the sort of music every bar band and Bad Seeds fanatic across the length of Australia aspires to make, but seldom does, but because few either have the a) stamina or b) talent or c) strong editor-in-control (here, nominal band-leader Ben Salter).
There’s a easy fluidity that links the classic Australian Gothic feel of Gordon Stunzner’s ‘Book Of Poison’ (with strings borrowed from The Go-Betweens’ classic '16 Lovers Lane') to Bridget Lewis’ uncomfortably open attempt at folk mythology on ‘Milli Vanilli’ (a tale of the storms which devastated sections of Brisbane a couple of years back), that links Adrian Stoyles’ upbeat, surprisingly brief '60s charmer ‘Rain’ to the laidback bluesy groove of ‘Choppin’ Wood’. And it doesn’t go away, not for a moment.
There are so many disparate threads being followed it’s a wonder that it hangs together, let alone feels like a cohesive experience. It does, and unmistakably so. Each song might pick up on different themes: the flight of a wounded bird here, a Beatles jangling guitar there, a pastoral plucked admonishment over there (Ola Karlsson’s ‘Do Right’, which one would imagine goes down a storm at the annual Gympie Muster, countrified up a little)… but it all comes together easily, fluently. And when the occasional flight of undeniable genius comes to the fore – ‘Book Of Poison’, ‘Eternity’ (Salter’s plaintive, self-immolating wail for understanding), the easy grace of the opening, multi-voiced ‘Say You Will’ – they shine even harder, shouldered in the company of such stalwarts
In a recent interview I conducted with Salter for Rolling Stone, the songwriter resorted to calling The Gin Club’s music “indie” – perhaps the most misleading use of the word I’ve seen for a decade.
You could call it Australian (unlike most rock music coming from this fair country that references US and UK sources and even borrows their voices, The Gin Club’s music could only have come from a bunch of Brisbane outsiders who grew up somewhere in the middle of Queensland). You can call it country (several songs here have echoes of Kris Kristofferson and Gram Parsons). You can call it folk (‘Milli Vanilli’) or alt. country perhaps (although that description always seems to come with a nod towards the fake, and The Gin Club are nothing if not authentic in their mood swings) or blues rock (Conor MacDonald’s title track, which hides its gentle sentiments underneath layers of wrenching feedback). But indie…?
I doubt that The Gin Club have ever swooped so low, even in their most drunken, desperate moments.
Everett True