The Breakdown
Jo Meares is a prodigious talent and whatever he turns is mind to, it will be remarkable. His new project, Jo Meares’ Silver Bullets (let’s ignore the possessive comma issue), eschews his ambient and ethereal side for the full blooded rock’n’roll experience. OK, it’s still ethereal, but with a vibrating combustion engine to power the prose, allowing him to explore an edgier and at times noisier sound on this debut self-titled vinyl album.
After playing a number of live shows, the band decided to record some demos. They were initially intended as a document of their sound but on hearing the recordings it quickly became clear the group had recorded something quite special. Meares explains:
We soon realised that we had the makings of a pretty strong album. The songs on the album have all been recorded before and released on my earlier albums so we simply picked the songs that worked best with the band and recorded them.
The album, for me, is as much Mark McCartney’s as mine. It’s a guitar rock album and he is the guitar player. We’ve been playing together 8 years now so he knows my songs in depth. Mark Carson also brings an enormous amount of groove and charisma with his double bass and Charlie Barker brings a lot of grace and melody with her saw and backing vocals. She also softens our perhaps masculine edge!
Opening track and lead single ‘Lone Gun’ blasts off with its ambulant bass and Meares’s distinctive throaty vocals that breathe an air of malevolence and opulence. There is cathartic bacchanalian excess to the sound, adorned with lyrics that paint an evocative world laced with indulgence and whiskey. Layers of guitars create shards amongst the rolling percussion and bass and the effect is like a meeting between Rowland S Howard, Edgar Allen Poe and Hunter S Thompson in a dingy dirty basement filled with shattered glass and regret.
‘Birdsong Bells’ has an opening that sounds like it was recorded on an empty oil tank deep in the bowels of the earth before a crystal liquid entry of sky-scraping guitars bursts in to the space like a geyser. Meares’s voice is a silk veil encrusted with diamonds: deceptively soft but with a razor sharp edge, half whispered and yet piercing like a sabre. The lyrics are evocative and breathtakingly beautiful:
As the winter thawed wild flowers started to grow
Deep in the forest where they never dared show
One glistening lonely flower so pretty and white
Stood all alone in that dark night
And the trees they cried with a birdsong like bells, wild sorrow rang out over the hills…
Meares’s lyrics are like a meeting of Nick Cave and the Romantic poets of the 18th century: deeply evocative story telling that paint stories on an endless canvas. Guitars howl like an endless storm before a haunting finish. This is incredible stuff.
‘Poison Flowers’ romps in with a reverberated glam stomp like The Cramps rolling in the hay with Chris Isaacs while Meares tells tall tales of bacchanalian excess and indulgence, a wailing harmonica etching in highlights on top of the dark sparkles of the instrumentation. Bright guitars sparkle in ‘One More Time’ and the sound of something like a harmonium before Charlie Barker adds her velvet tones to the jaunty tale of blind devotion in a bawdy rollicking track:
I heard you’re pulling jars
Dancing topless in bars
one more time
wearing your cowboy shirt on street corners
one more time
I love you babe
for all time
I still love you babe
Its always for
All time
It’s a statuesque, thrilling imperial ride.
‘Terrified Of Love’ writs large Meares’s sardonic, self-deprecating sense of humour that runs like a golden thread through the album. The layers are not so complex, the instrumentation muted with a more space in the delivery and luscious harmonies, but the pace as frenetic in what is a bright spacious drop of pop that sound like nothing else around at the moment.
‘Neil Young Saved My Life’ shimmers with a pulse quickening rate, augmented by piano and a high-stepping jaunt. It’s a paean to Meares’s musical influences: a glorious tribute to the power of music with a sneaky little twist of humour:
There should have been a dead man on the road tonight
My lucky star was shining bright
I tried to kill myself on a motorcycle tonight
Neil Young saved my life
Hank Williams saved my life
Tom Waits saved my life
Nick Cave saved my life
Joni Mitchell almost killed me…
Absolutely brilliant.
‘I Loved You More That Day’ is a gentle lullaby to a moment of love and devotion – but a slightly qualified one that recounts a moment of desire perhaps augmented by darker circumstances. The instrumentation takes a backseat: glittering in the distance with haunting backing vocals but prowling like a black cloud on the horizon, a slow burning fuse. It is an epic cinematic song that sparks into a burning intense flame.
The final track ‘As I Lay Dying’ is another densely layered dark epistle to finality – evocative wailing theremin in the distance and a clippety clop trot. Meares’s lyrics are as spectacular as ever:
Burn my bones and make some ashes And take those ashes to the bright blue sea Throw those ashes in that lovely Pacific Ocean That’s the last you will see of me 4/ I dreamt you held me as I lay dying I dreamt you held me as the darkness was closing in I dreamt you held me and you stroked my weary head I dreamt you held me as the darkness was closing in
This is a magnificent album. Steeped in an antipodean dusty dryness yet leavened by bright rays of sunshine and Meares’s eloquent poetry that strikes like shards of lightning. Jo Meares’ Silver Bullets take us on an extraordinary journey into the heart of darkness: a swampy gothic paradise laced with white frills and blood red velvet. His voice is an unguent, a salve that at the same time hypnotises and mesmerises, drags you into a beautiful stunning abyss.
The spaces he created in his previous work have been skillfully filled by the Silver Bullets to create a enchanting ornaments and vetements to the vocals and the lyrics, cloaking them with a shimmer and a sparkle with a dark undercurrent of feedback and distortion.
Jo Meares’ Silver Bullets are like a fresh version of what the old Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds could have grown into, but with a level of maturity and vision that excels, a sense of beauty and grace that is triumphant. The self titled album is out now and available to download and stream through the link below and here.
Jo Meares’ Silver Bullets will be launching the album tonight (Saturday, 4 May) at the Marrickville Bowling Club with guests Golden Fang, Sxy Xmas and Syntax Error. This is not to be missed.
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