There will only ever be one album by Big Smoke, and that\u2019s a shame.<\/p>\n
After a decade on the Melbourne, Australia music scene and six years as lead singer and songwriter for his \u201cdream band,\u201d in 2015 Big Smoke frontman Adrian Slattery was diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer. Time Is Golden<\/i>, Big Smoke\u2019s debut, was recorded between November 2015 and March 2016, even as Slattery battled through months of chemotherapy and eventually also brain surgery. He died in May 2016, less than a year after being diagnosed.<\/p>\n
As much as that sad reality hangs over this album, the music itself is anything but funereal. Rather, it\u2019s a stirring song-cycle about the duality of existence, both celebration and nightmare, exploring joy and sorrow, love and loss, life and death. These tunes\u2014all written and sung by Slattery\u2014aren\u2019t an easy listen, but they\u2019re also stunningly well-crafted, both tender and fierce, infused with a furious commitment to being fully present in every moment of your life that remains, to grasping the reality that the most valuable asset you can ever possess is time.<\/p>\n
Big Smoke\u2019s musical influences are apparent from the opening stanzas of \u201cSomething Good\u201d; this a 2016 take on The Band\u2019s earthy Americana sound, churning ensemble grooves with jangly little flashes of late Beatles and Gram Parsons and Tom Petty here and there. The band\u2014Luke Brennan (drums, vocals, guitar, harmonica), Alex O\u2019Gorman (bass, vocals), Tim Baker (guitar, vocals) and Joe Cope (keyboards), with Slattery adding guitar and harmonica\u2014plays with a loose confidence that ensures every song achieves its full potential. <\/p>\n
And then there are the lyrics. Song by song, Slattery catalogs the emotions he experiences on his journey, never flinching or glossing over either the highs or the lows. From the hooky, almost jaunty optimism of \u201cSomething Good\u201d (\u201cHad enough of the bad luck \/ Hit us harder than I thought it could \/ But we can\u2019t stop now, we\u2019re gonna find out how \/ We can turn it into something good.\u201d) he veers into the grand, compelling ballad \u201cBest Of You,\u201d pleading to receive \u201cnothing but the best\u201d of his lover as he rages against the dying of the light, crying \u201cI won\u2019t give up \/ I won\u2019t sleep \u2018til I\u2019m dead.\u201d The cathartic finish of \u201cBest Of You\u201d bleeds right into its mostly instrumental coda, the dreamy, haunting \u201cTime Is Golden,\u201d three minutes of rippling Hammond organ and gorgeous, silvery guitar that eventually circles back around to reprise a triplet from \u201cBest Of You.\u201d<\/p>\n
From that powerhouse opening, the album explores new angles and takes on similar themes. \u201cWrong\u201d feels like late-\u201980s Springsteen, lush synths over a spare, echoey backbeat as Slattery sings \u201cAll the plans that we were making \/ Now I don\u2019t see the point.\u201d \u201cWhen You Dance\u201d opens with Harrisonesque weepy licks before evolving into what can only be described as a progressive love song. With time signatures shifting between verse and chorus from the start, at 3:45 it threatens to fade out but instead crashes headlong into an epic, wailing, rather Brain May-like guitar solo that eventually falls back in exhaustion, making way for guest Phil Now\u2019s sax to come in over a gentle, aching little piano and guitar duet that feels like a wordless funeral march, carrying you to the close of this eight-minute mini-epic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWoman\u201d finds Slattery baring his soul once again, mixing more anger at his fate with a desperate plea not to be left alone. (\u201cI ain\u2019t goin\u2019 down in the second round \/ I\u2019m puttin\u2019 up a fight\u2026 Now the wheels are comin\u2019 off \/ And I\u2019ve probably said it all \/ And you might be better off \/ With some other guy\u2026 But I need a good woman here to ease my mind.\u201d)\u00a0 All the more remarkable, this jumble of explosive emotions is set to a playful r&b arrangement, complete with burbling clavinet, surging Hammond, and a stinging guitar solo. \u201cAnd it can\u2019t be said enough \/ All I\u2019m thinkin\u2019 of \/ Is love.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cKiss Me Once\u201d places similar sentiments in an entirely different musical setting, a slow, deliberate, plaintive lament whose key line\u2014\u201cSo could I please kiss you once before I\u2019m gone\u201d\u2014simply rips your heart out. Another sharp musical turn and \u201cLean On The Fire\u201d surrounds you with echoey guitar and haunted-house organ; Slattery sings \u201cI feel the fear drawing near\u201d as the song builds to a feedback-laden, cataclysmic climax.<\/p>\n
\u201cLay Thy Hand\u201d calms things down with a gentle acoustic contemplation, again asking a lover for comfort and companionship: \u201cCome and save my soul like I know you can \/ Where you lay your hand.\u201d The title of closer \u201cHoney, I\u201d alone says a lot\u2014it\u2019s an interrupted thought from an interrupted life. Over a tight, echoey arrangement, Slattery\u2019s vocal is all jittery urgency, the tempo frantic as he sings \u201c\u2019Cause I have no revelation \/ Just a feeling I can\u2019t describe \/ I need to speak with you tonight \/ Honey, I.\u201d <\/p>\n
Many great albums and many great songs revolve around the experience and emotions of loss and grief, whether in the form of a breakup or death or something else. Only a handful do it as artfully and movingly as Time Is Golden<\/i>. Whatever Adrian Slattery\u2019s bandmates in Big Smoke go on to do in the future, they should carry with them the knowledge that they did their brother proud. This album is the sound of five talented souls playing their hearts out and leaving nothing on the field, knowing all the while that only four of them would walk away. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[9902],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-44662","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-big-smoke","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44662"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44662"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}