- Ainslie Wills is one of Australia’s real musical treasures and still, after all these years, a bit of a hidden one. As I’ve said before, this small town girl is a musician’s musician, completely focused on pursuing music-making before all else. Actually, that may not be quite accurate, Ainslie’s new record, is a personal document, suffused with dissatisfaction. That’s despite the title, All You Have Is All You Need. It’d be easy to read it as a platitude, but if you were to hear Ainslie say it I think it’d come across defiantly. There’s a belligerent quality, directed not just at life’s increasingly rough challenges, but inverted, shunted back inwards, like Ainslie was putting a blowtorch to her own soul.
You can hear it in a song like Society which has a dual quality. There’s an irony that rings through the chorus, a gallows humour as Wills ruefully points the finger: “I blame it on society.” How did I get here? Who’s fault could it possibly be and how did my life come to this? “What am I doing with my life? / I feel like I should be hitting some kind of mark / The man, the house, the car / But it all feels kinda off. … I blame it on society.” That’s the thing about existential angst though: no matter how much you try and push it away, it always leaves a stain on your person.
It leaves its mark on the record too of course. Ainslie’s work has always had a strange dualism: she slams out loud, anthemic rock that shakes the rafters. At the same time and even in the same songs there’s a hurried, harried, introspection as though whatever else Wills might be doing, there’s a constant substrate of self-interrogation. On this record it seems more evident than ever. Speaking of another recent single, Mountains, which features the chorus refrain “Mountains on my shoulders / Hosting mountains on my shoulders” and thus makes it fairly obvious, Ainslie rubs out any doubt in interview: "I am not an insomniac but am a worrier and often have very interrupted and sleepless nights that, due to the fact you’re lying there in darkness, everything seems so much more intense."
As the personal questions become more intense the music has been pressed into their service. It’s still an Ainslie Wills record, full of complex fusions and careful craftsmanship for those who care to dig into it, but the urgency of her personal concern has imparted a dynamic quality that leaps from song to song. Like a river in flood eroding its banks, Ainslie’s anxieties overtake all else and the subtleties of her craft feel in danger of being drowned.
Is all you have really all you need? As much as this record literally says that, the feeling of unease that lingers in the music makes you wonder if Ainslie really has the courage of her convictions. The self is like a mental puzzle that refuses to be teased out -as the years start to pass by faster and faster- with time quickly running out. Ainslie Wills has always prioritised her craft over the business of music, which is part of what makes her so great. There may be things in life even more important than music, however. On All You Have Is All You Need Ainslie Wills retreats into herself, playing to an audience of one; and I don't know if they're happy with what they hear.
- Chris Cobcroft.