Red Jezebel - How I Learnt to Stop Worrying
29 August 2008 by Max Easton
Red Jezebel have come a long way from their beginnings 10 years ago as work-mates at a supermarket chain. Through the release of four EP’s, a WAMi for Most Promising Band in ‘98, their acclaimed debut record ‘Revelations’ and tours with bands of such stature as Garbage, Powderfinger, The Superjesus and Elbow, they’ve firmed themselves as one of Western Australia’s finest. Their unique blend of genre meshing indie rock has seen them hit radio with force, their recent single ‘Kicking Deadly Sins’ in the top 200 songs played on Triple J in the last 12 months. They’re a band well known and highly celebrated in their home town of Perth, but one who for a ten year career have been essentially agoraphobic, staying local and starving the ears of East coast fans aside from the odd national tour in a support capacity. Their latest album, ‘How I Learnt to Stop Worrying’ is further proof of the high quality of music they’re breeding out West, a beautiful piece of raw, layered atmosphere; echoed keys swallowing distorted guitar behind the smooth croons and clever lyrics of Paul Wood.
‘How I Learnt to Stop Worrying’ is a varied affair, with the lethargic, haunting opener ‘Hollywood’ in direct opposition to the Latin flavoured ‘Find Our Way Back Home.’ Red Jezebel toy with style and genre like they’re irrelevant terms from an obscure foreign dialect; packaging their unique brand of rock with no label. Tracks like ‘Kicking Deadly Sins’ and ‘Lost my Gun’ show their form as another fine Australian indie act, but it’s impossible to stick them in that pigeonhole when such varied tracks exist on the album as the chilling, electronic inspired ‘More Than You’ll Ever Know,’ and the musical equivalent of a spaghetti western in ‘Find Our Way Back Home.’
Of note in this album, as with Red Jezebel’s other work, is the unique beauty present in the voice of Paul Wood, featured in no better form than the gorgeous sing-a-long ‘Lady Grace,’ where his whispered moans exhibit shades of Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard, if Gibbard’s throat had been doused with petrol and strained through a fine pore filter. His moans, yelps and husked tones sit on top of piano, guitars and drums that sway back and forth as his love song encourages ‘to make your old love your new love; a long love for life.’ ‘How I Learnt to Stop Worrying’ is a collection of songs thematically spanning love, loss and badassery, the cheery emotional highs of ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Kicking Deadly Sins’ torn to shreds by the raw, chilling Muse-esque brutality of ‘Heathen Politics’(which opens with the line ‘Legions point to a witch, we’ve got ways to make you talk.’) They’ve always been very good at performing multiple styles on the same release, but now they’ve mastered it, releasing 13 tracks of such varied backgrounds that it often feels that they could belong on separate albums.
As far as influences go, it’s hard to ignore the similarities to Death Cab For Cutie, with occasional flickers of Radiohead, Muse and strangely, Dave Bazan’s Pedro the Lion on ‘The Piper is the Devil’s Pilgrim,’ but the similarities are not so overwhelming that they take away from the record. It stands as a phenomenal example of what Australian music has always stood for; freedom, expression, an open musical mind and raw, solid fun.
This is an album that hasn’t slipped under the radar, but blipped and flickered until everyone was listening. It’s an independent release that reached high rotation without the backing of a label based on the ability of the musicians aboard the band and the quality of the songs. If you’re a fan of Australian music and are looking for a way to peek inside what the Australian music scene is becoming, give this a listen. It’s genre-bending indie rock at the top of its game and worth every bit of praise it gets.
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