Music review: Southern Fried Festival, various venues, Perth
Southern Fried Festival ****
Various venues, Perth
Wainwright and Tannenbaum were originally brought together by Kate McGarrigle. And the former paid a kind-of-tribute to his late ex-wife with their only co-composition, the weighty, warts-and-all number, Over The Hill. The track perfectly encapsulates the bittersweet sting of Wainwright’s confessional shtick, which marries wry, witty responses to “death and decay” like Doctor and Old And Only In The Way with lyrically arch, tender reflections on the roving 70-year-old’s messy personal life.
Sharing an extract from his forthcoming memoir, about struggling to connect with his soon-to-be famous, openly resentful children, Rufus, Martha and Lucy, he also focused on a weak, toxic masculinity on the thoughtful Men and Charlie’s Last Song, a heartbreaking elegy for troubled troubadour Charlie Poole. Wainwright continues to deliver music that makes you wince and smile in a single line, even after all these years.
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Hide AdProphet is also looking back on bright lives burned out for his latest record. The turbulently charged title track of Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins, about the enigmatic early death of the I Fought The Law singer, is a rock ‘n’ roll banger which was quirkily juxtaposed here with the droll, new wave meditations of Jesus Was a Social Drinker. From psychedelic pop to surf rock, Prophet and his band The Mission Express infuse alt-country with a recklessness, humour and urgency, his duet with his wife Stephanie Finch on the rhythmic In The Mausoleum, and call and response with the crowd on the churningly ferocious Temple Beautiful, an impish delight to hear.
You certainly couldn’t accuse Nielsen Chapman of wallowing in a sorrowful past. Despite the sort of medical, bereavement and relationship history that could only come to a country singer, she remains an optimist. New song Enough For Me is a jaunty number, while How We Love has a crystalline beauty in its clarity. Sand and Water, dedicated to Princess Diana by Elton John when he performs it, or her big commercial hit, This Kiss, could be mawkish in less assured hands. But Nielsen Chapman is a compelling chronicler of powerful emotions, a rightly acclaimed
writer for others who deserves her growing spotlight as a performer.
Finally, a mention for the UK’s Danni Nicholls, whose huskily sultry singing and gift for heart-rending intimacy make her an exciting prospect.