Augie March
Moo, You Bloody Choir
Jive / Zomba
By Doug Wallen
If the album title conjures bleeding livestock, remember that bloody is a curse equivalent to damn in Augie March’s native Australia. The choir seems borrowed from Greek tragedies, considering there’s a toga-clad minotaur on the cover. Such curious wordplay and imagery all but define Augie March, especially since their classic-sounding rock arrangements often play the straight man to frontman Glenn Richards’ brainy lyrics. They’ve thus been branded an indie rock band, despite strong folk and country influences and a total “Dad Rock” vibe to many of their songs.
Moo, You Bloody Choir, which won the Australian Music Prize last year, begins with “One Crowded Hour,” itself the recipient of an award or two. It was also voted 2006’s best song by listeners of Oz’s premiere alternative radio station. One can see why; it’s striking and ageless, a haunting and swooning ballad that somehow resembles both Don McLean’s iconic “American Pie” and Jeff Buckley’s famed take on “Hallelujah.”
It’s a powerful introduction to Richards’ songwriting, pairing heartfelt lines like “I thought I’d found my golden September in the middle of that purple June” with gloomier sentiments. There are even some stinging lines that could be taken as a criticism of mainstream music: “Far from these nonsense boys and their nowhere music / It’s making me sick and I know it’s making you sick / There’s nothing there / It’s like eating, it’s like drinking gin with nothing else in.”
The trouble is, the rest of the album doesn’t offer anything nearly so strong, or anything to truly convince us that Augie March are worthy successors to that nowhere music. For every crisp and ringing tune, there’s a dull and plodding one, and Richards’ lyrics are cheesy almost as often as they’re artful. His throaty voice bears no trace of an Aussie accent, as if it was learned from the countless American records he’s committed to memory.
There’s an admirable range to Choir between the dreamy pop lilt of “The Cold Acre” and the country warmth of “Mother Greer.” The brass and bells of the sleepy “The Honey Month” are followed by the ragged, rangy “Just Passing Through,” which is the noisiest song here. The playful “Thin Captain Crackers” sits between Eels and Randy Newman, which isn’t as weird as it sounds.
Augie March is a real grower of a band, which partially explains both their slow crawl to recognition and their intensely loyal fan base. Even if they turn out to be too indie for the singer-songwriter set and too singer-songwriter for the indie set, their trend-blind fusion of the earnest and opaque is well-executed and decidedly unique. “One Crowded Hour” deserves to be at least a minor hit in the States, and if the album were to follow suit, it certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing.
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