[review] Mallee Songs – Gum Creek and other Songs

The sprawling, homespun folk amble exhibited on Mallee Songs’ Gum Creek and Other Songs is a lulling, unrestrained and encompassing affair. The droning, improvised song structures are as fervently present as they were recorded – immediate and uninhibited. Its cohesiveness as an album is astounding in light of the goal it set itself – which is purportedly none. All the tracks were recorded over a 4-year period with different production set-ups in different locations, “patching together a loose sonic narrative from Melbourne to Japan and back again”.

The common thread that ties all these hazy laments together is an ever-present, tinny yet warm sounding acoustic guitar; either noodling, strumming or droning a forever ‘lost tuning’. It’s an element that lazily weaves contrapuntal melodies with the washed vocals, or drives the more incessant jams like an erratic Tennessee Two rhythm section.

 

We’re introduced with the melancholic ambling of “Egyptian King” – an introspective folk song that brings Skinner’s voice to the fore – a production choice that doesn’t stick around for most of the album proper. “The Panorama Course” then fades in (we hear tape hiss before anything else) and we’re introduced to the strolling improvised structure that’s exhibited on most of the album. Open tuned acoustics noodle, washed vocals drone repetitive lulling refrains and percussive claps and shakers keep things ticking over.

“Cloud Swell” continues on much the same – except wordless, more erratic and bursting – an excitement that sounds like a freed classically trained guitarist discovering an open tuning and improvising for the first time. Here we’re introduced too, – through field recorded wildlife sounds – to the Australian rainforest/coastal theme that litters the lyrics and song titles.

“Hey!”Immediately references Venus in Furs with its familiar beat and atonal, textural violins. The vocal melody isn’t as dark however – more lazy and bumbling, in a good way. “Driftwood” necessitates the ‘hazy pop’ tag in the presser – it’s Feelies reminiscent (of which they even slip in a referencing melody in the live set) yet more warbling and off-kilter. The title’s onomatopoeic, as flowing vocals and wobbly guitars drift in and out like wood being carried to and fro by a seething tide.

“Sunday Jam” is just that – an electric guitar saunter with a meandering drumbeat. “Lost Tunings” jams on open guitar tuning that was disposed along with a cheap acoustic guitar on return from Japan. It washes in and out quickly with almost rhythmic oceanic samples. These sounds seamlessly become vinyl crackle, then panning ambience to precede the next track – an attention to atmospheric detail, or a Musique Concrète aesthetic that blankets the background of the whole album, rewarding audiophiles and sample nerds alike.

“Maggie” persists with the meandering acoustic, this time underpinning the song with a more prominent melody rather than improvising idly. It’s within we also hear Skinner’s dry wit lyrically – turning an innocuous act of his beloved dog following her nose into something contemplative and human, with the refrain – Maggies gone again / Chasing the smell / Freedom on the wind / Freedom smells like piss. Again ambience fills the background here, as a piercing cicada sample pans left and right creating a lulling rhythm for the track.

If “Driftwood” is a sun drenched coastal weekend, “The House of the Rising Damp” is the subsequent working week – its distorted, claustrophobic and agitated in comparison to the blissful air of the rest of the album. It’s a brief and cathartic departure that’s welcomed – an erratic, blown-out disruption to balance out the ambience. “Lee’s Theme” is the middle ground – where soothing guitar sweeps are contrasted with discordant sounds and harmonics.

“Point Impossible”is the conglomeration of all the sonic themes explored on Gum Creek and Other Songs – incessant and driving yet loose and unpredictable. It’s melodic and poppy, has clarity of the individual parts but still sounds tonally homespun.  It’s almost whole, but ends before you want it too. The vocals hint too at an unattainable epiphany, literal actions and descriptions that trace something bigger, an equivocal existentialism – yet you can’t be sure as they’re buried in everything else – the welcome, noisy confusion that shrouds the periphery of Gum Creek and Other Songs.

It’s a piecemeal, and a self-described ‘oddball collection’, but it does what it intends to do – captures the spirit of the places it was recorded. It’s a ‘pure listening experience’, in terms of how it was created – immediate and always with the red button on, aligning itself with a 90s DIY aesthetic.