Album reviews: The Stark Palace | Benjy Ferree | Woody Pines | Aboriginal Soul

Published on Sunday 27 December 2009 20:42

THE STARK PALACE: THE STARK PALACE **** SHARK BATTER

If only 3Oh!3 had spent some time at college hanging out with the weird kids, they might have accessed the trippy pop hinterlands on which the Stark Palace is built. Roger Simian, Borders-based psychiatric nurse-turned-fanzine writer and independent record company mogul, has more or less dedicated his DIY musical career to the barking memory of Captain Beefheart. He is joined in this latest venture by professional grave-digger Cameron Jack. Their debut album collects 13 tracks from their three EPs to date, some little more than tantalising sketches, which exhibit an almost throwaway talent for off-kilter pop – and dramatic Romany instrumentals.

BENJY FERREE: COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME BOBBY DEE BOBBY DEE

****

DOMINO

Come Back To The Five And Dime… is an ambitious indie rock opera-style tribute by the Washington DC-based Benjy Ferree to Disney child star Bobby Driscoll, who played Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island and was the voice of the animated Peter Pan before he was dropped by the studio and fell into a life of heroin abuse, spells in jail and a flirtation with Andy Warhol's Factory, followed by a lonely death and burial in a pauper's grave. You just couldn't make it up. But even if you don't get or care about the biographical references, this album is a blast to behold, thanks to the swaggering way Ferree mixes T-Rex glam, garage rock'n'roll, Seventies pomp, Fifties doo wop and even channels his inner Jack White on a couple of numbers.

FOLK

WOODY PINES: COUNTING ALLIGATORS

****

WOODY PINES

This is a rollicking, engagingly idiosyncratic amalgam of old-time blues and jug band sensibilities from the North Carolina-based Woody Pines and his band, whose songs of Cajun queens, dusty highways and speakeasies are informed not only by squalling harmonica and whumping bass but a conviction that makes them sound about six decades older than they really are.

As well as Pines's nasal holler, Zack Pozebanchuk on bass and Rennie Elliot and Andy Tubb sharing credits on drums, there are tasty contributions from guest artists including producer Gill Landry on slide guitar. Stand-out tracks include the harmonica and fiddle-driven Chew Tobacco Rag and a compelling rendition of Harlem, a vintage joint-jumper swinging to sax and cornet. It's not all up-tempo stomp, and Pines' Walking Down the Road has overtones of early Dylan in its guitar fingerpicking and wistful drawl.

WORLD

ABORIGINAL SOUL, THE MUSIC OF INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA

****

NASCENTE

It was 20 years ago, but I still vividly remember my encounter with Aboriginal soul-singer Archie Roach on a Melbourne council estate where cars, houses, and people all wore a battered, bread-line air. A little man with glowing eyes and short, twisted dreadlocks welcomed me in, shouting over his shoulder into the kitchen: "Mum! Bring us some tea? And keep the kids out?" Behind the closed curtains of the living room, you might have been in the bush: ancient, broken-down chairs stood round a central open space decorated with tribal bric-a-brac, and a huge Aboriginal flag adorned the walls. A tiny, smiling woman brought our tea: Ruby Hunter, Roach's wife and co-star.

Over tea, Roach told me his story, which was also the story of thousands of his coevals: abducted from his parents at the age of three by government agents, and "assimilated" into white society via a series of fosterings.

"Then, when I was 14, my sister wrote to me that my mother had died – and I didn't know I had one. I didn't know who or what I was any more. The shock confused me totally." After ten years as a vagrant alcoholic – earning his drinks with his guitar – he met up with Ruby, whose story almost exactly mirrored his. "So we got together and had children."

The rest is history, and in this excellent compilation by Jane Cornwell, these intrepid singers take their place alongside a dozen others blessed (or cursed) with the same tangled origins.

Here is the Saltwater Band, the Narbalek Band and the Black Arm Band, and the voices of Tom Lewis, Mark A Hunter and the "Black Elvis", Dan Sultan: poetry and pride, fantasy and mysticism, in every style from rock to jazz to reggae, all with an unmistakable Aboriginal twist.