Snowman
Of course, it never snows in Perth.
That's just the start of the intricacies when considering
Snowman.
You might also dwell on that tired old cliche about Perth
being the most isolated city in the world. A fact that makes
it all the stranger that four kids from the most scattered
backgrounds... Olga, Icelandic... Aditya, Indonesian...
Ross, Italian... Joe, British... should wash up in this town
on the edge of the Indian Ocean and band together...
in a band.
It's a turn of events that reads like a Joseph Conrad novel
about banished ex-pats huddling together on the edge of
the colonial world, safe in each others company and
hatching a desperate plan to get the fuck out of here.
But maybe the magnetic forces (more than evident within
the band and its music) which have drawn them together
veil less obvious truths.
Like the fact that amazing music can be made in any town
in any part of the world if the right crew of disparate
characters collide with each other in the middle of the night.
Or the hidden benefit of operating outside the glare of the
spotlight that beams on a handful of global media hubs,
allowing Snowman to secretly develop their own sense of
logic, their own aural landscape, their own code of conduct
and rules of engagement. It's this that makes Snowman
stand aside from the standard fare that trundles down
the production lines of mass marketed music.
One listen to The Horse, The Rat And The Swan makes it
more than evident that this is a far from ordinary album.
There is a ferocious urgency here, a dark energy at play,
almost to the point of obsession or mania. This is a work
evidently expunged from the band's collective psyche...
extracted whole, writhing and coated in a primordial slime.
It's the sound of the band desperately capturing their ideas
as if they fear they may escape them, as if they fear they
will never have this opportunity to seize and encapsulate
this moment again.
This is a record that expects you to engage, make an effort
and stop being a passive recipient. Yes it's a busy world and
finding time to pay attention, unravel, unfold, reveal and
comprehend is difficult for all of us, but not everything
should be pre-processed and pre-masticated for our
convenience, should it?
Snowman have travelled some distance since their self-titled
debut album two years back. Along the way there have been
sweat stained, sold out gigs, $500 videos, inferences on
Pitchfork that they are Australia's greatest band, WAMI
Awards and kind words but all of this is now flotsam,
floating in the wake of The Horse, The Rat And The Swan.
This is a ground zero moment. There is a flow here, a long
hidden path to be uncovered, running through the album's
dense, overgrown vegetation.
We Are The Plague sounds like a final message picked up
on the scanners of a post-apocalyptic, galactic battleship...
Daniel Was A Timebomb careens on a fucked up rockabilly
riff that reminds us that this is now an ancient music of a
desperate, disenfranchised underclass... A Rebirth and
She Is Turning In To You are exactly what they say,
transfigurations, the sound of a band mutating, breaking
out of its chrysalis and taking on a new form... The Horse
(Parts 1 and 2) is pure ritual; possessed and frenzied,
(say hello to Mr Conrad again, deep in the heart of his
darkness and wondering if the apocalypse is now or later
in the week)... Diamond Wounds sees Snowman finally
emerge, dwarfed by their own imposing (and dare we say
progressive) sonic architecture, into a cavernous underworld
of their
own creation.
The Horse, The Rat and the Swan is released on 24 May 2008
Snowman will tour this album live in July.
Snowman will base themselves in London later in the year.
"We are the plague, we are the virus"
"We are machines".
"Disconnected"
