The Vine album review: We All Want To – ‘We All Want To’, December 2010
An album review for The Vine. Excerpt below.
We All Want To – We All Want To
Damn, that Tim Steward can really write a song.
In 2010, this is no real revelation: after all, Steward’s distinctive vocal delivery previously led the wonderful Screamfeeder, a Brisbane-based, self-proclaimed ‘noisy pop’ trio who emerged in the early 1990s. While they never quite achieved the wider success of alternative rock peers like You Am I or Jebediah, they remain one of the nation’s finest acts. Though Screamfeeder never quite hung up their boots – last year, they even toured a Don’t Look Back-style reprisal of their 1996 classic Kitten Licks – Steward’s creative soul evidently remains restless.
In many ways, We All Want To could be considered a spiritual sequel to the songwriter’s past affiliations. Here, alongside four collaborators, several of Steward’s stylistic hallmarks remain intact. Minus one exception in the recorder-based ‘A La Mode’, the songs are arranged around guitar, which alternates between clean-picked phrases and sheets of pleasantly-distorted chords. Like Screamfeeder, central to this band’s appeal is the vocal interplay between genders. In co-singer Skye Staniford, Steward has found a remarkable foil. Their softly-spoken melodies entwine beautifully on standout track ‘Japan’, whose lyrics concern a sense of equilibrium often overlooked when travelling the world. Steward counts off the destinations he’s visited (“There’s stamps in my passport that say I’ve been to Japan / Germany, and Mexico / I watched the Christmas lights come on in Amsterdam / The sky was all aglow”) – but there’s always “as many goodbyes as there are hellos”. He and Staniford conclude that “The stamps in my passport mostly say / There’s as many comebacks as gone-aways”. They seize and reprise that final line in the coda, as their bandmates crash around them in tightly-orchestrated chaos. Forgive the extended analysis of just one track, but in ‘Japan’, We All Want To reveal their songwriting template: mood, restraint, tension, release.
Full review at The Vine. More of We All Want To on their website. The music video their song ‘Back To The Car‘ is embedded below.
The John Steel Singers – Tangalooma
The Holidays – Post Paradise
Surf City – Kudos
Queenslanders finally drop their debut after a pair of promising EPs
Written partly between “a brutal Brisbane summer and a bitter New Jersey winter”, this EP from Bigstrongbrute – musical alter ego of Paul Donoughue – is the successor to his self-released album, Gardens In The Gutter (2008, now out of print). What began as a solo project has blossomed into a group effort, both on stage and within this release: friends lend bass, trumpet, flute and piano to augment Donoughue’s frail guitar tone. Besides a contribution from Jessie Warren (aka Carry Nation), who provides guest vocals on ‘In My Own Mind’, it’s Donoughue’s deep, distinctive voice that dominates the mix. His songs are meticulously crafted, yet the end product is played loosely enough by the band to impart a sense of spontaneity and charm.
Cut Copy – ‘Where I’m Going’
The Boat People – Dear Darkly
I’m coming clean: I wouldn’t be listening to Mondo Cane if Mike Patton’s name wasn’t on the cover; I can’t understand Italian, and I’ve never heard the original versions of these songs (barring one track, ‘Deep Down’, which was the theme song to ace 1968 comic book film adaption