Tall Stories

On third album 'Tall Stories', SubAudible Hum are a band in full control of their talents, writes JP HAMMOND.

Ouzo, sodomy and that irascible child liberal democracy aside, the Greeks got a few things right. In their infinite wisdom, they chose an interesting word for those who watch events and record moments in time; their word for a witness is “martyr”.

Even a cursory listener to Subaudible Hum’s transcendent third record, Tall Stories, would conclude that this is exactly the kind of double meaning of which the band might approve. Tall Stories is a record suffused with the dysentery that is modern politics. It’s the type of record which, in first single/relentless descent to hell ‘Tokyo Craigieburn and the Moon’, prescribes an escape from a world gone wrong with a one-way ticket to Basra.

And it’s exactly that kind of dogmatism, the self-important egotism of Confederacy of Dunces hero Ignatius J Reilly (sans humour), that suggests that martyrdom in its traditional form could suit SubAudible Hum quite well. And also that a record like Tall Stories might be as enjoyable as bringing yourself off into the latest edition of Green Left Weekly with a handful of patchouli seeds and grime-infested dreadlocks.

Don’t be fooled. For all of the difficulty that their occasional insights into the oppositional quagmire of contemporary left-wing politics provides, SubAudible Hum are blessed with a simple, precise focus on the musical side of the ledger. Put simply, they never let the issue of politics get in the way of a bloody fine song.

Opener ‘Bakersfield CA’ is the prime case in point. It’s a throbbing, insistent beast of a song, surely indebted to the kind of textured, urban, post-millenial ennui favoured by every band that came after OK Computer, but never so derivative as to detract from the energy of the song. Digitised drums shift brutally into simian, live beats, the rest of the band swell and recede against the inevitable tide and vocalist Danny Griffith gradually assumes the role of some of kind of demented, hyped-up pastor, ministering and sermonising with a narrative of desperate escape all over the accompanying majesty and drama.

If it’s a formula, it’s one they’ve mastered completely and assuredly, and its variations over the course of Tall Stories suggest only one thing repeatedly: SubAudible Hum are a band in full control of their talents.

“If SubAudible Hum’s vision on 'Tall Stories' is one confined to diagnosis and then prelapsarian escape as the solution, it’s also ultimately an uplifting record, propelled by energetic defenestrations and twitchy denunciations.”

To this end, the most important member of the band on Tall Stories is drummer Joel Griffith. His approach to his instrument is defined by a kind of barbarian lack of sensibility. On tracks like ‘Our Last Stand’ and ‘Go On Then’ it’s his flat, undemonstrative beats that surprisingly carry the songs aloft, giving the bludgeoning major chord sludge the band create here a heaving, breathless intensity. He never holds back. Even when the band lower the temperature on tracks such as ‘Redcoats At The Shore’, Griffith just ploughs through regardless. The band seemingly feed off his energy. On ‘Flexing In the Dust’, while the rest of the band make subtle, spacious moves, Griffith just sits above and beyond it all; a pushy, obtrusive figure, studiously lifting the band above despairing bedwetter music.

He’s ably assisted by production from the band (in conjunction with Finn Keane) that makes the most of his sledgehammer approach. It’s a record that acts as a defiant rejoinder to the wonderfully Australian desperation for veneration and “a good sound” that only some guy behind a desk in the US who bought the coffee for the guy who moved the faders on an early Pearl Jam record can provide.

Tall Stories sounds infinitely better than most Australian records released in the last 18 months bequeathed onto a music-buying public with the added burden of a “name” producer or mixer. Guitars alternate between a brilliant sheen, a kind of indie-rock-via-Stax clarity, and industrial sheets of noise, seemingly processed and digitised by lathe. The drums have the cavernous tribalism rooms in North America can apparently only provide and the banks of arranged, choired vocals sit perfectly in a busy, difficult mix. Word to the wise: look and listen harder, closer to home.

If Tall Stories is never exactly light listening, it’s also never a chore or a difficult journey. It’s testament to the band’s strength as arrangers and songwriters that these songs, despairing indictments of modern life regardless, have the clinical efficiency and memorable harmonies of great pop music. The band are at their best when they let the drama drop for just a moment. ‘Nanogram’ is the kind of chiming, charming, iridescent pop gem that suggests the band could have a whole, separate existence should they ever be diverted from the rigours of politics.

It’s unlikely that will happen any time soon, but that’s no problem. If SubAudible Hum’s vision on Tall Stories is one confined to diagnosis and then prelapsarian escape as the solution, it’s also ultimately an uplifting record, propelled by energetic defenestrations and twitchy denunciations.

It’s notable that, for all the theatre and drama of the proceeding nine tracks, it’s the closer and titular track that relents, with Danny Griffith murmuring gently, “I’ve planned a great escape … you and I, we will be fine.” It’s the moment where the artifice of the record disappears and the heart is exposed. If, at the bottom of it all, SubAudible Hum are optimists and believers as well as martyrs, it’s that beacon of hope that makes the record shift from simply a great one into a rare one. A prayer for something better.

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Tall Stories is out on Low Transit Industries on September 26 via Shock.