How many times have you heard that intro? That thundering "Boom! Ch-chik! Boom!" that Phil Spector stopped time with on the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" back in 1963, that one that nobody seems to be able to trump 40 years later. It's in "Just Like Honey" and "Everything Must Go" and "The Bear" and "You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve" and it sounds just as good every damn time. If a band is stealing this intro, it's probably because it has realized it wasn't going to write a better one. Augie March's sophomore album Strange Bird opens with just this intro, cleverly transferred from the snare and toms to the guitar and hi-hat, but still booming with immediacy.
So now that they've got your attention, does this Aussie quintet have anything to say? Quite a lot, it turns out, with an 18-page lyric booklet to spell it out if you become lost in their heavy accents. Such charming accents, though, and more power to them for not trying to sound like they're from Southern California, even as much of their music dives deeply into Brian's sandbox and leans on Spector's Wall of Sound. Strange Bird is a Technicolor pop opus that's so stuffed with ideas and instruments that it's wont to rupture from time to time, as the band's ambition blows away the substance of the songs with organ overdubs and enough Zildjian crashing and bashing to overwhelm the treble.
Indeed, if there's a complaint to be made about Strange Bird, it's that there is a surplus of sound. At the end of "Brundisium", they sound like three Wrecking Crews, and it distracts a bit from the exquisite melody that the jam overtakes. Likewise, Glenn Richards' rich, soft lead vox on closer "O Song" are backed by a wailing accompaniment uttering the same lines low in the mix, a la Pink Floyd's "Southampton Dock", and it's slightly too much-- the harmonium and horns had the backing down just fine, thanks. But we're complaining too much here, I'm afraid. There's much more good stuff to talk about than bad.
Take opener "The Vineyard", for instance. After the Spector tribute, it becomes a languid, labyrinthine ballad stuffed with ghostly harmonies, lovely descending piano parts, wandering backwoods guitar leads and a generally warm, Fridmann/Lips glow that invites you into the band's florid poesy and symphonic arrangement sense. But it's a setup, because while you're adimiring their slow beauty, they blindside you on track two: "This Train Will Be Taking No Passengers" is a wailing rockabilly psych raver that chug-a-chugs through verses like "Onward and on to the ends of love/ Pricked vanity, habit and ruse/ Onward and on to a premature silence/ Where death finds too much use." Place those lyrics in the shadow of the death of the band's original keyboardist, still fairly fresh in 2002 when this album saw its original Australian release, and they take on other dimensions.
Having covered their ground in just two tracks, Augie March set out to refine it and expand it in the 50 or so minutes that follow. "The Night Is a Blackbird" is a pretty thing moving at the pace of a Galapagos tortoise, melody upon melody upon melody. "Up the Hill and Down" is a horn reverie to introduce "There's Something at the Bottom of the Black Pool", which sounds like its title, and "Addle Brains"? Well, as if the title wasn't already enough, it's a loopy, almost Victorian swinger stuffed as usual with keyboards and character-sketching lines like "Addle Brains would drink for four days and no eats/ And sleep in the glens of botanical parks/ And on the humped bus shelter seats."
The original Augie March was a character dreamed up by Saul Bellow, a man "in search of a worthwhile fate," and his namesake band, halfway around the world, has nicely found that fate on their second album. Frankly, it's amazing that it took two years for these songs to reach the states-- those folks down in Australia already own an entire continent, so no need to hog the greatest music they produce for themselves as well, right? At any rate, it finally made it here, and is waiting to be heard.
