- Melbourne’s getting behind the evolution of Lisa Salvo’s dreamy folk music into a proggy supergroup of sorts, On Diamond. It’s not surprising really, considering that half of the local creative community (Hannah Cameron, folks from Jaala, Grand Salvo, Jazz Party as well as contributions from Evelyn Ida Morris and Joe Talia) are involved, at this point. Oh and On Diamond neatly hurdles the supergroup personality clash disaster by letting Salvo pen all the songs on this debut record. Instead of struggling for control of creative direction, it’s easy to hear the new contributors broaden and deepen the richness of the harmonies, the power of the grooves and pencil in experimental curlicues all over this self-titled debut.
Although the band style themselves as #experimentalpop, #artpop, #avantpop (hmmm, I sense a pattern here), the enthusiastic additions, especially on the guitars and what is presumably an impressive array of effects pedals and other devices, push much of this over the line into growling alt-rock and thanks to all the improvisational freedom, prog-rock at that.
In fact, the record seems to vacillate between Lisa Salvo’s familiar, folky turf and great, emotional surges of psych, usually missing pop altogether. That makes sense, thematically, because much of the lyrical content involves Salvo’s confrontation of quite personal trauma. Take recent single, How, which is actually one of the more playful, jaunty songs on the record, but if you listen, Salvo’s making a song-long plea for connection with an absent, possibly abusive family member: “How I long to connect with you / I camp under the oak tree, wishing you had been strong like it / I try, try to reconcile the deep paternal rift.”
Salvo’s own tone of voice is kind of inscrutable: she maintains an almost regal emotional stability in her delivery that is often at odds with the intensity of her story. Sometimes the music itself, in those rockier, thundery moments will illustrate what she herself will not. Take the end of Poison Blood, which has all the inexorable power of a slow, crushing, stoner groove, to ram home the depressing realisation that we may be doomed by our genetic heritage.
On Diamond stands in good company with a growing list of critically lauded, melodic but experimental, interior-psychological explorers, like Jenny Hval, Julia Holter or, closer to home and no less powerful, Happy Axe, Medicine Voice or, of course, Evelyn Ida Morris. Having said that it must be noted that musically -especially since On Diamond themselves seem to go out of their way to avoid mentioning it- this collection of songs has its musical roots in the prog of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I can’t be the only one who gets echoes of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit when they stumble on to On Diamond’s Laughing In The Face Of The Big Door, strutting majestically and channeling Alice In Wonderland with a surreal flourish, at the back of the record.
Bolting a super-charged band to a dream-folk act has really given Lisa Salvo the opportunity to unleash what’s inside, emotionally and musically. It’s an arresting debut, as lyrically sweet as it is confrontingly blunt, intimately traumatic as it is sweeping and grand. It’s strange when you think about it, how the possession of inner demons and the charisma to unleash them, is a time-honoured path to making the best rock’n’roll.
- Chris Cobcroft.