Record Reviews
Tears Again
By A.H. Cayley
Actor/singer Jane Badler puts in the performance of her career on her second album with SIR 'Tears Again'. Words by A.H CAYLEY.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Jane Badler is an actor, perhaps best known by older readers as Diana, the evil alien from the original series of V, and younger readers as Diana (nice touch, writers!) in Neighbours. With an extensive acting portfolio, it's little surprise she should inhabit her songs so well. Tears Again – her second album with collaborator SIR (Melbourne's Jesse Shepherd) – is one of Badler's best acting roles to date.
Like the falsely accused fugitive she played on Neighbours, Badler’s character on this album is also a woman in exile. She’s running from her past and herself while staying put in an empty home; an incredibly human blend of defiance and vulnerability. She's an aloof loner, cursing the men she wants and the women she wants to be, while remaining coldly resolute that she's the only companion she could ever count on. She's wishin' and hopin', but with none of Dusty's optimism. It's a caricature of womanity that would be offensive if not so deftly played, with the occasional wry smile peeping through.
It works on a number of levels. It's a skillful display of characterisation and narrative songwriting, hilariously over the top while still holding back just enough. It could easily be ridiculous but never goes too far, a knowing smirk evident throughout. From the TV studio in-house band intro of first track 'Wrong People', it's an exercise in camp. 'Men Who Lie' will (should) be mimed for years to come at Midnight Shift drag shows (“Men who lie/Are the only men I've ever known”), while 'Nursery Rhyme', which was written by Badler and is by far the most stripped back song on the album with just a piano, guitar, cello and minor percussion swaying below her voice, will be the vessel on which countless heartbreaks sail.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Jane Badler with Sir - Men Who Lie by 00remotecontrol
Only Paul Grabowsky's lavish production could suit these songs, and combined with Shepherd's songwriting and Badler's embodiment of the role, it makes Tears Again a perfectly stylised masterpiece. With amber string sections and near-insipid backing singers layering over sad brass accompaniment - a trumpet playing a brief, proud solo here, a violin mournfully re-imagining it there – the whole thing takes on the feel of a '70s lounge club. Badler could easily be the starlet-of-the-month fronting Don Lane's house band for a bit of mid-show Bacharach, lit up and over-emoting through a face that gives nothing real away, and that's the whole point.
“Badler could easily be the starlet-of-the-month fronting Don Lane's house band for a bit of mid-show Bacharach.”
The songwriting seems straightforward enough to begin with, but after a few listens it becomes clear just how clever it is. 'I Want a Lot of Boys to Cry At My Funeral' is a seemingly obvious display of girlish conceit, but it's in the asides that the humanity of these thoughts peek through; how she feels and how she hopes those who hurt her do too: “My brother's gonna open up the casket, and show you all of the scars are gone/And my mother, she's gonna take your hand and say, 'Pretty thing, it's time you moved on.'” It's the classic victim wish; revenge and absolution in one. The same can be seen in 'I Don't Trust Women', which again would be insulting (“Don't like the sisterhood, never did and never will”) were it not such a delicious piece of dramatic irony. The character isn't mocked, however, as she easily could have been, and it's the brief insights past her hardened facade that tell the full story: “I'm much too old to lie to myself/But I'm still flexible when it comes to everybody else ... I don't trust myself/And of course, I don't trust you.”
The first lines of 'Did I Leave the House Today?' would be scrawled on the pencil cases of deep teenagers the nation over if it were a shoegaze or grunge number (“I often wonder if it's later than I think/The carpet's quicksand, and I'm starting to sink”), but set as it is in a purposefully MOR show ballad, it's an hilarious exploration of the careful histrionics of a drama queen. The spoken word outro seals the humour of the song, but, as on the rest of the album, doesn't pile it on so much as to spoil the effect.
This is frankly one of the most clever, self-aware works I've had the joy of dissecting for quite some time. That said, it's also just a damn good listen, whether you read into it or not. Fun, sexy, intelligent and incredibly well-constructed by all players, Tears Again is a rare work of pop culture genius.
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