out now...........
released on REVERBERATION , June 2008.
REVERBERATION
RECORDS is the label and the place where you can find
out how and where to buy the new Dave Graney and Clare Moore cd.
Front and back cover, Dave Graney and Clare Moore, as imagined by the cruel artistry of Tony Mahony.
Track Listing
you had to be drunk
I come from the clouds
lets kill god again
junk time
I like to be haunted
only passin' through
I'm in the future now
bring me my liar
I was a country boy
punk dies
I needed someone to find me
cime and underwear
After the sprawling, spiralling,
duelling double disc that was "Hashish and Liquor" ,
Dave Graney and Clare Moore took to the road with a minimalist , lyrical
trio and recorded "Keepin it Unreal".
Finding themselves starving for a groove and a beat, they jumped into
a state of mind to produce the greatest album of their career, "We
wuz curious". They wanted upbeat r&b grooves. R&B as
in the chords and the licks and the beats. The flattened fives and the
blue notes. All tricked up for a night OUT.
They had started to play with pianist Mark Fitzgibbon on Hashish and Liquor
and wanted to work more with him in a collective situation. Stu Perera
on guitar had joined forces with them in 1998 as a 19 year old, straight
from college, and they wanted to get his jazz stylings on the tracks as
well. Stu Thomas on the bass and vocals wuld pull it all together.
They woodshedded the tracks for two months at teh Yarraville Mouth organ Band Hall in West Melbourne, working out all the parts. They arranged it all and wer DOWN ON IT. They wanted to make a recording and BEAT THE DIGITAL ENNUI by forcing a SITUATION! A SENSE OF OCCASION! They went into Sing Sing South in September 2007 with their old school engineer Adam Rhodes. He hung so many mics around the drums room and the amps that it was gonna be impossible for any sound to escape unrecorded. they laid down 8 tracks in a day/ Everything, vocals, guitars, drums and backing vocals. It was like a jazz session.
Then Dave graney and Clare
Moore took the hard drive back to their Ponderosa studio and mixed it
over a month or so. It was finished by November 2007.
players involved
Dave Graney, electric and acoustic guitar, bass and organ.
Clare Moore, drums, perdussion,vocals, organ.
Stu D aka Stuart Thomas, bass, vocals.
Stu Perera, electric guitar.
Mark Fitzgibbon, piano.
bvs on "junk time" by Jane Dust and Elizabeth McCarthy.
mastered by Greg Wadley
Cover illustration by Tony Mahony.
Recorded September 2007 at Sing Sing South.
Engineer Adam Rhodes.
Mixed at the Ponderosa October-November 2007 by Dave graney and Clare
Moore
Produced by Dave Graney and Clare Moore.
“We wuz curious” is , lyrically , probably the most autobiographical work by Dave Graney with 5 of the songs starting with the perpendicular pronoun “I”. It is also very much a “band” album with each player of the Lurid Yellow Mist collective contributing music for a song .
Within the songs, looking outwards , you could say in one place that its a
jazz/r&b album, elsewhere its pumping electro , over there “yacht rock” , elsewhere, wailing post punk. Lets call it a pop album.
It starts with “you had to be drunk” and this drops, with a single hi hat swish, into a funk groove that is all encompassing. It drives along with a lazy , behind the beat feel around an irregular six bar figaure that keeps both unwinding and winding up. Dave Graney, a teetotaller ,is singing about his life in the lyric.
It then leads to “ I come from the clouds” where Dave Graney lays down a bragging blues with a film noir twist. “I’m the man from nowhere/ I’m a tail dragger”. The music could have come from Graney and Moores first band , The Moodists and is perhaps the noise thats always been heard by them way underneath all the soft and sexy sounds they’ve drawn around them over the years.
“Lets Kill God Again” is song with direct power, both lyrically and musically. The sort of song that jumps up on its feet, fully formed. God was dead when Dave Graney was a kid and he liked it. Musically, its like something Prince would not be ashamed of and definitely a Dave Graney song.
“Junk time”. music composed by Clare Moore when Dave Graney asked for an “electro boogie”. “Junk Time” is a football term for when “the gtame is over and the clock is winding down”. Any achievement in this time is worthless.
“I like to be haunted” is a groove. A deceptively simple musical figure that needs a tightly would band to play their parts just right. You couldn’t do it on an acoustic guitar. The lyric is expansive. Dave Graney is talking about presence. His own and that of others.
“Only passin’ through” has music composed by pianist Mark Fitzgibbon. The band had woodshedded seven tracks for the session and had completed them well before schedule. They were going to record Miles Davis “In a silent way”, which they had been playing live, but Dave Graney asked Mark if he had any music. He taught the band the charts and this is the result. Complex and highly layered with chords. Yacht rock? Dave delivers another noir story about a drifter in a hotel room, reading a book and waiting for his life to really begin.
“I’m in the future now” is a rush of energy. Full of the light, Brazilian textures that have characterized Dave Graney and Clare Moores work for many years and mixed with Stuart Perera’ s slashing rock stylings on guitar and Stu Thomas’s pop sense of r&b. Jazz shark Mark Fitzgibbon shifts his gears on the keys. It moves. The whole thing. The music and the lyrics.
Dave Graney starts the song like he’s speaking from “above” and “beyond” and gives a us a glimpse of a life seen from a new remove.A load has been lifted and moorings have slipped. We are in new, exciting waters and are enjoying the thrill and the rush.The music for this song was written by bass player Stu Thomas aka Stu D and the words by Dave Graney. Stu Perera plays a solo at the end that would not be out of place on a track by Steely Dan.
“Bring me my liar” is a long jazz tinged loping groove written by Dave Graney and given incredible life by the Lurid Yellow MIst. There is no other outfit making sounds like this or coming from this direction. This song claims to come from “the real world” but acknlowedges there are “so many real worlds”.
“I was a country boy” has music written by Stuart Perera and is a very autobiographical song where Dave Graney sings very directly about the direction he travelled from . A direction which has informed his character and demeanour. The music is kind of latin and it swings. Perera lets loose with a blazing solo.
“I needed someone to find me” was written and played by Dave Graney. Another noir story. This one is a glimpse into the world of a writer/player or a theatre owner/player. A one man show. He has “the greatest story to tell” but he needs someone to find him to start the story.
“Punk dies’” is a funk groove played by Dave Graney and Clare Moore, with Stu D contributing some bass. Its a song about a “flash” which is what punk rock was for Dave Graney. It was there and it was gone and occasionally you see it again. It dies. (As opposed to punk lives”). Its supposed to.
“Crime and underwear” ends the album with another very personal and autobiographical song which Dave Graney unwinds and teases out over six minutes. Its a song about losing the power to write and communicate and then getting it back, only with a new awareness of how delicately balanced the whole shithouse is. The title comes from the American newspaper mogul of the early 20th century, William Randolph Hearst, who told his writers to focus on two things, Crime and Underwear.
Significant revolving doors they went through to get the momentuum to make this masterpiece?
The 2006 and 2007 minimalist trio shows around Australia by Dave graney, Clare Moore and Stu D which gave them the consciousness of playing music froma jazz perspective. Not getting hung up ojn reproducing a "sound" but putting familiar tunes through different musical setups and configurations. Playing in bars, cafes , bookshops, shearing sheds, houses, parties, theatres and pubs. Putting out LARGE in small attacking commando groups.
The "Point Blank" theatre show tuned to snare drum tighness by Dave Graney, Clare Moore and Mark Fitzgibbon over the years 2006 and 2007 at the Adealaide and Melbourne fringe/Cabaret festivals. Hard Core performances.
"The Bewdy of Speed" show/art event at the Back Box - Victorian Arts Centre Nov 2007.
The month long hit out as dark house jazz band at the Blue Diamond in August 2007. Three sets from 11pm to 3am four Saturdays in a row to the richest dancers in Melbourne.
The September 2007 trip to play on the Cocos Islands, 2500 kilometres past Perth into the Indian Ocean. Who wouldn't dig that trip?
