Straight out of Sydney, the debut album by Sparrow Hill provokes many adjectives from this writer. Thoughtful. Dreamy. Charming. Intelligent.
The five piece, formed only three years ago, have been assisted by the ever-faithful SBS Whatever Music Project in the recording of the ten-tracker. The multicultural broadcaster funded the release, as they have with releases by The Emergency and Barrage. Hell, I’m tempted to start a band myself just to get a nice digipak like this one out.
Until You Go is full of slow, groove-laden tracks that sometimes border on experimental and sometimes veer towards the basket labeled ‘pure pop’. It’s no surprise that they’ve supported acts the like of New Buffalo and Architecture in Helsinki, as their brand of sit-down-and-watch-us-play music is in the same vein as the aforementioned acts as well as Cat Power. No is No Answer grooves along for nearly four minutes without really getting off the ground while the quite striking vocal talents of Sonia Tsai stand out and drive the track along. Stark keyboard sounds courtesy of Que Minh Luu complement the minimalist guitar pluckin’ of Melissa Radliff. The vocal tracking on For An Age is remarkably done, while the harmonica on In Your Stead accompanies a soulful tune as Tsai croons “is it all the same? To you it is.” After a while, however, all the tracks seem to blend into one. The emotive sounds of Full Circle and The Locust, while pleasing, seem content to let Tsai’s voice take over and dominate over the instruments. This is not a bad thing in the sense that her voice is truly wonderful – but even wonderful voices can get tiring when the music is not different or diverse enough to back it up.
Or maybe I’m just totally ignorant. You see, I’m from the school of three chord guitar rock, and when I hear anything that strays from the simple formula, I find it difficult to analyse it. Whatever the case, there is no doubting that Sparrow Hill are a talented bunch of musicians. Musically and vocally competent, it’s always a slight cop-out to claim that a band has ‘potential’, but Sparrow Hill have it in spades. Possessing a great vocalist, it’s their lack of musical ideas that has let them down to a certain degree on their debut album.
Should Sparrow Hill return with a whole big bag of musical tracks, I’ll be listening. Until then, I’ll file it under the ‘one to watch’ category. And that’s not a place to be.
