- Classic songwriting: it can be a sledge, a way of saying ‘there’s nothing new or interesting happening here’, faint praise to cover up the boredom. When you run into really classic songwriting, however, it’s something else altogether. It’s a kind of alchemy, a conjuring of the power of chord progressions, harmony and dynamics that can turn a simple pop tune into a thing of power and beauty and in some cases something a little more again.
I’ve run across a number of Australian artists who work exactly this kind of magic, the kind of stuff that sets the ears on fire. Yet, at the same time they’re largely unappreciated. Perhaps people only listen superficially, only hear that pejorative kind of ‘classic’, a glossing of what’s been done before, not recognising they’re in the presence of something profound. There’s a particular subset of these musicians around the country, the likes of Lehmann B. Smith, Lucy Roleff or Pascal Babare who take the standards of folk and pop and work their sorcery upon it. The folk is dry and elegant but subtly powerful, a dam that walls up surging, powerful emotion. The pop is timeless, the foundations of the craft that have underpinned every song in the genre, right back to the early twentieth century. I feel like I’m being gaslighted, because what they produce is uncannily good, but often I feel like the only person listening.
The list, of course, would not be complete without mentioning Obscura Hail. Sean Conran’s musical moniker has been his vehicle for unleashing a vast amount of material. A slew of albums stuffed full of music of this kind, matched with finely observed, philosophical lyrics and a dark, wry sense of humour. Thanks to its classic qualities it’s impossible to listen to an Obscura Hail record without hearing a host of other artists echoing out of it. It is possible to slim the flood down and identify some broader tendencies however. When I first ran across him Conrad was fascinated with folk music of a quiet elegance which he claims to have derived from Sun Kil Moon and a soft, emotional power that he attributes to Sufjan Stevens. Going further back you can hear a more indie-rock heritage in the Obscura Hail catalogue, one which dovetails quite nicely with all the folk music, by travailing much of the same territory as the gently devastating Elliott Smith and the sweet roar of his old band, Heat Miser.
Given how much of this great back-catalogue had passed without comment or even much appreciation, I was quite surprised -and pleased- to discover Obscura Hail’s recent signing to the little boutique powerhouse Dot Dash. This change is accompanied by others: Conran’s label debut is not a monolithic album, but a tightly curated EP, called Zero. It weals back round on his long musical history, recapitulating every part of it in just five songs. Also, Conran brings along a couple of co-conspirators to help him do all that, rather than working by himself as he so often has. So, a little boutique showcase, for a little boutique label.
The very first track here, Swear Jar, delivers in microcosm the whole of the Obscura Hail sound. A deceptive acoustic guitar intro is suddenly upstaged by a flood of warm guitar distortion and backing vocals. The lyrics are, well, a little bizarre, really: a dry little treatise on the value of cursing in the face of life’s upsets. “If you swear I can tell something’s beating you down / Take you out from the underground / It’s less like a light switch and more like a dimmer / While the anger is fading the room will get brighter / The same with your language, I understand / There’s a spectrum between words like **** and damn.” At the same time it’s dryly humorous, philosophical and even emotionally distant. There’s a universality to it too, but you may have to stick around for a while before it clicks. It’s a little disconcerting, because the bittersweetness of the harmonies is powerful -almost overpowering- and the crashing waves of raw, immediate emotion don’t seem to belong to this quaint little ditty. Listen a couple of times, however, and the penny will drop; and Sean Conran will be there with wry little grin, when you come down from it all.
Other moments are, as is often the way with Obscura Hail, even more eliptical. The deliciously heavy, even shoegaze pop of Goth is a perfect example. The verses offer psychedelically strange observations which are full of emotional ructions, even as they make no literal sense. The chorus makes a stab at explaining all of the strangeness: “But when we collide with Andromeda in 3.75 billion years / I'll be wide awake in another form / indifferent and unafraid that my body's gone.” Which is to say: life is strange and full of sound and fury, but look to the universe, the big picture and all of these little cares will fall away from you.
Zero delicately, even precariously, but consistently balances dryly elegant song structure and powerfully emotive pop tunefulness with wry humour and oddball philosophical truths. At the same time it’s the work of an utterly maverick spirit and songcraft of the most classic kind. Whatever else someone means when they say ‘classic songwriting’ I don’t think they saw Sean Conran and Obscura Hail coming, but you’d be well-advised to sit up and take notice.
- Chris Cobcroft.