Augie March - Watch MeDisappear

Fri 17th Oct, 2008 in Music Reviews

When One Crowded Hour took out top honours in Triple J’s Hottest 100 of 2006, many were pleasantly shocked at such a result. Though Augie March had established a strong fan base with their sophisticated, poetic pop, they had remained largely cult concerns. In theory, the idea of such a band penetrating the mainstream seems laughable: densely arranged pop that is adult but never MOR, fronted by a poet-turned-songwriter whose lyrics are as elliptical as Dylan at his most cryptic? It seems ridiculous, a fantasy. With One Crowded Hour, however, Augie March made the leap, and landed at the top of the pile.

With the achievement of a more recognisable status comes the inevitable pressure to follow success with success. Such pressure has brought countless bands to their knees -Augie March, however, are well and truly standing. Watch Me Disappear, the band’s fourth album, rests equal to almost any album in their back catalogue, with 2002’s staggering Strange Bird barely edging it out as the high-water mark. Joe Chiccarelli’s pristine, understated production creates an elegant atmosphere, allowing Augie March to produce some of the most accessible material of their career. Sonically speaking, the album is certainly the Augie’s most commercial album to date, and though that particular c-word is often interpreted as an insult, it should not be considered offensive to be thought of as rich, lustrous and unmistakably beautiful.

Like most Augie March albums there exists a faint edge to their sound, a dark undercurrent that sneaks through in the drum’s pulse, or hides in the minor-key feel of the organ. The chorus of Becoming Bryn is a ringing example of this; a roof-shaking chant of the word – œrun’, it is simultaneously singalong and skin-crawling. Perhaps this darkness is inferred, or at the very least influenced, by a sense of anger directed inward that flits through Glenn Richard’s lyrics. The Glenorchy Bunyip starts out as the tale of a fabled monster, revealing itself in the later verses to be more of a Jekyll & Hyde story, a theme echoed in Becoming Bryn as the protagonist finds himself in the grip of his darker self: “and if you think I’m becoming the worst I can become/you’ve got another thing coming baby/I’ve a few tricks up my dirty white sleeve”. In the title track, Richards flirts with self-destruction as a means of transcendence, seeking “an Elysian acre”, a paradise to which one could disappear.

Given the grim lyrical tone, some might suggest that Richards is struggling to reconcile the dueling concepts of himself as an authentic musician and as a successful one. Such an interpretation of the album would ignore, however, Augie March’s fondness for the contrast of light and shade: joyous pop songs that dabble in loss as well as love. Even One Crowded Hour, breakthrough though it was, is an incredibly complex song, celebrating love’s power to elevate yet also, in the songs own words, lead to wreck and ruin.

The simple fact is that Augie March songs are as mysterious as the Mona Lisa, cryptic as Highway 61 Revisited, and as beautiful as Rimbaud. There is no one in Australia, and possibly no one in the world, who writes lyrics that trip so poetically off the tongue as Glenn Richard – delicately emphasised and knowingly obscured by pop arrangements that inject barroom piano ( City of Rescue ) and toy instrument melodies ( Pennywhistle ) alongside ambient tones ( City of Rescue again) and graceful, tasteful strings.

Maybe one day Augie March will produce an album that is terrible, utter trash that confirms for us that this is music made by mere mortals. Until that day, let us all tremble in respectful awe at the majesty that is Watch Me Disappear.

Watch Me Disappear out now on SonyBMG