- The shadowy femme fatale looms in the shadows adorning the cover of Cilla Jane’s new album Happy Hour, stabbing a gun, menacingly, in your direction. That’s how the record sounds too, at face value: a troubling dame, mixed up in something intriguingly bad; with the subdued, velvety piano bar keys, hushed drums and loping bass, all gently lapping beneath Jane’s siren song.
These aren’t just Waitsian tales of depravity however. Happy Hour isn’t exactly what it seems on the surface. Instead it’s a noirish paintjob disguising more everyday emotional concerns. Nonetheless those concerns are real, urgent and relatable. The two levels feed into each quite effectively over the course of the record; it’s a neat schtick.
This is good, because after years of trying variations on pop and folk and different band formations in both Sydney and Melbourne, Cilla Jane has settled, like veterans sometimes do, on a very simple version of her craft. Her trio setup -almost certainly solo when necessary- is portable but elegant and powerful, when it has a mind to be. You can hear the proof of concept on album opener Judas. The tentative opening bars are suddenly lifted high as the chorus peals out, awash with reverb. It’s like a beacon lit in the darkness and it’s haunting.
Jane is very married to her mellow murkiness. While I think each song here works well in isolation, as a troupe it can be as though the night stretches on, nearly endlessly. It nags at me a little because it’s not at all difficult to imagine alternate interpretations for a lot of these numbers. Take Losing You, which boasts a whispered chorus of undeniable beauty. Think about it though -and after you do I don’t think you’ll be able to get it out of your head- what if you did a high powered Cyndi Lauper pop version? Call me crazy, but at least listen to it and have a think. I reckon there’s other stuff from Cilla Jane’s musical past lurking in here and, given the chance, it could add some more colour to Happy Hour’s unrelenting chiaroscuro.
If that’s an outrageous claim, there is at least one pop star whose presence is felt in this record inescapably and that’s Tori Amos. From the quietly urgent piano melodies to the darkly intimate themes, right down to the occasionally incomprehensible pronunciation, it’s clear Cilla Jane is profoundly influenced by the Bösendorfer slinging singer-songwriter. That’s okay, because so am I. For many years Amos has been accused of too liberally borrowing from the greatness of Kate Bush, but these days I hear a large number of Australian singer-songwriters specifically borrowing from Tori Amos and, honestly, it’s often the first thing to draw me to them.
The femme fatale is a notoriously deceptive figure, what you see is definitely not all you get. Cilla Jane is the same in that respect. I think there’s many hidden layers, emotional and musical on Happy Hour, only some of which become clear by its end. What’s here is intriguing, seductive, but like some hapless schmuck in a film noir, I find myself stumbling through the darkness, looking for more.
- Chris Cobcroft.