Lastelle - This Is What IDo

Fri 24th Feb, 2006 in Music Reviews

Hitting the road with nothing but a backpack and accoustic guitar, Sydney-sider Chris Lastelle returned from places as far and wide as Spain, UK, USA and Mexico with the bulk of what he would craft into his new album This is What I Do.

13 tracks, ranging from the swinging title track, This is What I Do to the quirky and off-kilter March of Time, offer flavours and snapshots of Lastelle’s journey, making up the fabric of this recording.

While written on accousitc guitar songs like Don’t Fit No More and It’s Love Again ooze smooth blues that seems to have been born straight out of heavy, and loud, jam sessions.

Blues and a taste for classic and pure rock’n’roll certainly make the foundation for Lastelle’s album, but time spent travelling around Australia, gigging and writing have also allowed a real country rock influence into the sound. On My Way captures this time perfectly:

I travel light
And socialise
Wide open eyes
On my way

backed to a real truck drivin’, bourbon swilling beat.

For the most part the album keeps an up-tempo vibe, songs filled with momentary glances of people met and places seen. On Facing The Other Way and Hesitation Lastelle, however, waxes more reflective. The compositions of both songs are more accousticly driven and lyrically spend more time focused on one subject, allowing the thought behind the song to develop more fully.

Having recorded the basic album tracks at Tiger Studios (AC/CD, Vanda & Young) Lastelle took the masters home to tweak, tweak, tweak. The results have their pros and cons. Resultant is a polished album, neatly trimmed at the corners with no loose threads or bum notes.

Which is what you’d expect from a serious recording artist. But it’s on the earlier, more rockier tracks like Don’t Fit No More and When We Are Together that could really be opened up and bled out with a more dirtier production style – let the guiatrs loose to scorch and the the bass to rumble in the dust.

The undoubted highlight of the album is One by One where the blues driven production style and a written-on-the-road accoutic track blend beautifully into a wistful and honest confessional that has the same haunting weight of a Neil Young track:

Yes I know that I’m slow
But can’t you see I make the best of it
I take on all things as if I knew how
And count them as I can

This Is What I Do is just a little bit country, a big bit blues and a whole lotta rock. It cops its influences from wherever the songwriter called home that night, somewhere around the world.