- Who is The Person? It’s a question that has shadowed a slew independent releases and appearances over the last few years. A simple answer is The Person is Minna Wight, eccentric Melbourne based artist and musician, probably best known for her work as Tina Tongs in Aussie-BBQ themed novelty band The Burnt Sausages. Australiana seems to be a key theme in Wight’s output – and Tide Life is no exception. Easily her most sophisticated musical output to date, it recalls Australia’s cultural and natural ecology, with particular attention to the cultural identity of Australia embedded in the production technology of eras of pop past.
It harkens back the studio electronic backed pop rock of Australian bands like Pseudo Echo and Mondo Rock. But divorced from cheesy vocals and predictable pop structures The Person abstracts the sound of these pop backing tracks beyond the boundaries of a collective recollection with imaginative and exploratory instrumental arrangements. Barry-R-Reef for example recalls Men at Work with its pan flute chorus, metal chimes, and new wave lead guitar. There’s the sense throughout the album of a youthful investigation of internet-borne bootleg midi files. There’s the thrill and freedom of hearing pop music not obviously filtered through the hands of a controlling authority, but in the hands of a peer with their own amateurish and often bizarre, original approach to composition. It’s exciting, familiar and open to personal nostalgic assessment, recalling in a more sophisticated and localised way the concept of hypnagogic pop that has been used to describe artists from Ariel Pink to Oneohtrix Pointnever.
While conceptually being based more deeply in Wight’s personal memories of the ocean, Tide Life doesn’t provide a clichéd aural vison of it. Absent are passé new age flairs and trance music style sound effects of water sounds and wave sounds, and little more than a hint of steel drums. It’s a deeper vision than these obvious signifiers. There’s subtlety and imagination in the porpoise-like lead synths, sea shell shakers, emerging hermit crab arpeggios and handclaps that echo abundantly like resonate waves from a seashell in close proximity to the ear. Certain tracks like Rock Concert are even distincly reminiscent of video game soundtracks that prominently feature the ocean – Koji Kondo and Shinobu Tanaka’s Super Mario Sunshine soundtrack comes to mind.
Minna has a clear penchant for combining pleasing melodies, sweetly rhythmic pitched percussion and apt combinations of different synthesized voices. Each sound is well-defined amongst its numerous peers. On the title track the lead sax floats effervescently over layers of droning synth, twinkling keys and minimal percussion. There’s the density and sensitivity of Laurie Anderson in Moonee Puddles melancholic keys. Nice Feeling combines flittering percussion, voice synth sounds and a moving bittersweet bass line that could be straight from an Anna Domino song. The absence of vocals in something quite reminiscent of vocal lead pop music isn’t an issue but the main point of difference. The dense compositions always have something to say with numerous interventions into structure with ample solos, voice changes, breaks and dense blocks of arrangements. Though the fog of references to other media and music of the past might make you think otherwise, Tide Life is a curiously original and understated record with an abundance of thrilling and catchy compositions suitable for beaches, barbeques and dance floors alike.
- Jaden Gallagher.