Bush Gothic
Beyond The Pale
Fydle Records
2022
Beyond the Pale is the third album by Bush Gothic, the Melbourne trio featuring Jenny M. Thomas (vocals, banjo, piano, violin, viola and mandolin), Dan Witton (vocals, backing vocals, double bass, piano) and Chris Lewis (percussion, backing vocals, piano). The album should delight those who enjoy radical deconstructions of well-known folk songs.
When I say radical, I mean that were it not for the lyrics, you would be hard-pressed to recognise the iconic and traditional Australian folk songs they have been reinvented here, recasting them as spare, folk noir. It opens with the lurching, fractured piano and banjo-accompanied Jim Jones, a 19th-century transportation ballad of a convict who, sent to Botany Bay, dreams of joining the bushrangers to wreak havoc upon the British government, the Lonely String Quartet (featuring members of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) adding to the at times woozy atmosphere.
Perhaps the most striking reimagining is Pub With No Beer, originally written by Gordon Thomas and made famous through the recording by Slim Dusty; it’s best known as a bit of a country sway-along boozy rouser. Well, not here; Thomas brings her own set of lyrics adapted from Irish poet Dan Sheahan as the track opens on a tumble of drums before striking a somewhat drunken ebb and flow mazurka rhythm, her voice moving from fragile to strident as strings weave and the percussion clatters in the background.
Thomas also creates the music for her adaptation of Andy’s Gone With Cattle, a droving poem by bush poet Henry Lawson, the familiar lilting melody replaced by a haunted, dry tone of mournful fiddle, plucked double bass notes and wistful, ethereal vocals. In distinct contrast comes the restrained and deliberate percussive power of Ballad of 1891, Witton singing lead on a 1950 union number about the shearers’ strike, a defining moment in Australian political history, with words by Helen Palmer and the tune by Witton’s grandmother, Doreen Bridges, the folk core offset by jarring discordancy.
Country Town softens the mood with Thomas composing the tune and adapting the lyric from Judith Wright’s poem about a homesick exile, the sense of disillusion in her voice underscored by the repetitive single piano notes and pulsing staccato violin as its gathers to a close.
Composed by Thomas, Ben Hall Sleeps provides a brief, brooding musical interlude and leads into her arrangement of the traditional Streets Of Forbes, opening with harmonica accompanied by treated vocals before giving way to Witton on piano, violin and a sombre, pulsing drumbeat. Also known as The Death Of Ben Hall, it’s a classic in the Australian folk canon, recounting how Hall, a stockman turned notorious bushranger, was controversially shot – at least thirty times – and killed by the police in 1865 and duly forms an anchor to the album.
Another Lawson lyric – set to music by Steve Ashley – comes with an arrangement of Past Carin, continuing the theme of heartbreak as it recounts a woman’s loneliness in the harshness of the Outback, captured in the agitated piano and swarming violin notes, pulsing background strings and Thomas’s double-tracked vocals as the rhythms gradually gathers pace. Banjo returns for the achingly sung Road To Gundagai, written in 1922 by Jack O’Hagan and named one of the Top 20 Australian songs of all time; it tells of an emotional return home to a rural New South Wales town, the metronomic banjo notes augmented by bowed bass, spare muted drum thuds, and piano cascades.
A second transportation ballad makes its appearance with an arrangement of the six-minute traditional The London Convict Maid, inspired by the true story of Charlotte W, a London servant sentenced to seven years for robbing her master, sparse piano notes and minimal scuffed drums accompanying Thomas’s fragile, eerie voice as she channels the narrator, Witton adding his voice as it builds to a climax. It’s followed by another traditional, pizzicato fiddle runs, bass and staccato piano joining forces for the penultimate Mines Of Australia, Thomas providing new music for its lyrics about a fateful expedition by British gold prospectors looking to strike it rich. There’s something of Kate Bush in Thomas’s reading that makes it the most accessible number here. It ends with Brings Us Andy, a 40-second reprise of the Lawson poem with just Thomas’s plaintive voice and strings, a dreamy conclusion to a bold, mercurial and inventive excursion into the rich world of traditional Australian folk music into which you’re well-recommended to go walkabout.
Beyond the Pale is released on 29 July 2022
You can also hear them on our Folk Show: Episode 121.
Bush Gothic will tour the UK this summer, starting with an album launch at London’s Slaughtered Lamb on Saturday, July 30th.
Bush Gothic are also among the artists that Folk Radio UK is presenting at this year’s Sidmouth Folk Festival. They are performing a doubleheader on Monday, 1st August at the Cellar Bar, Kennaway House (3:00-5:00 pm) with Ben Paley. Read more about A Cellarful of Folkadelia here.
More dates can be found here: https://www.bushgothic.com/