Rivermouth: Subtropical Metropolis? | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Subtropical Metropolis? is the first full length album from Brisbane jazz/poetry band Rivermouth. It’s been a while coming – we have only seen a couple of singles from the band since their debut EP in 2013.

They do have a valid excuse for the delay, mind you. Lyricist and vocalist Jonathan Sri is in his second term as a city councillor, and is also kept busy being the public figure the state’s right wing media love to hate.

The tension between making political art and doing the day to day work of politics is an interesting lense through which to view this album. Subtropical Metropolis? has its fair share of political screeds – calls to action, utopian visions, anti-capitalist rants, explorations of colonial legacy. But its analysis ranges deep and wide. There’s a running theme of what it means to live in a city and a community, specifically the city of Brisbane and the community of those who want to transform it. Suburb names and local references are sprinkled throughout the record.

There’s a kind of cosmology or spirituality too, an anthropomorphism of the city and its features - particularly the winding brown river that Sri refers to by its aboriginal name, Maiwar. The stanzas in the song of that name about coral reefs and riverbeds living in the concrete of the skyscrapers are a wonderful example of what radical art can do – make visible the unseen realities that surround us every day. “This world is crowded with spirits…” Sri raps, “if you stand very still and squint into the middle distance you can sometimes make them out.”

There’s a holistic vision too in the way the album has been released. Subtropical Metropolis?, so far anyway, is only available on beautifully decorated USB sticks. A lot of thought went into this – easily copied and distributed like subversive texts, playable on whatever technology is at hand. Yet the refusal to disperse it into the cloud of streaming services keeps it tied to a physical location and physical people rather than the placelessness of cyberspace. Like the free, multi-genre backyard happenings where the band formed, this is an acknowledgement that the medium is the message, the way we say things matters as much as what we say.

Subtropical Metropolis? is epic, and not just in the breadth of its themes. Over the course of its seventy minutes Sri hardly takes a breath - his poetry dense with meaning, technique and memorable one-liners. Geoff Wong’s keyboard is similarly busy, his jazz background meshing with the funk and reggae influences of the rhythm section. As a musical mix it’s very West End.

This is an album designed to be part of something bigger – to be listened to and responded to in a community. Its songs are composed to resonate with the frequencies of the streets and riverbanks of the suburb where it was made.

“We put roots down, my heart’s buried deep under Brisbane town” says Sri in one of the opening, scene-setting tracks. The roots are an interesting metaphor - tendrils grounded in a physical location, but also an attempt at music tied to something more tangible than streaming numbers or indie hype. But it’s also an album that tries to anchor itself in the day to day work of putting radical ideas into action.

“We are questioning fundamentals, seeking the transcendental…” says Sri in Alarm Clock, “This is urban mythology, dissonant philosophy”. It’s an ambitious claim, one that we are used to dismissing as the typical bluster of an MC’s self-hype. But for Rivermouth, this is a genuine attempt to go beyond just notes and lyrics - to connect their roots deep into the heart of the Subtropical Metropolis they call home.

- Andy Paine.