Jen Cloher & The EndlessSea - Dead Wood Falls

Thu 16th Mar, 2006 in Music Reviews

Hailing from Adelaide, before moving to Sydney and then basing herself in Melbourne, Jen Cloher impressed many music critics in 2005 with her debut EP, Permanent Marker, and had the punters wanting, or rather itching, for more. Cloher and her band The Endless Sea seemed to be the premier support band of 2005, playing primarily alongside the mainstream brigade consisting of the likes of Missy Higgins, Pete Murray and Alex Lloyd to name a few.

Dead Wood Falls is the eagerly anticipated debut long player for Cloher and it’ll take you a few listens to get into it – but when it grabs your ear, and in turn your heart, you will be all the richer for it. Recorded live to tape over a five day period at Melbourne’s Sing Sing Studios with gun producer Paul McKercher (Augie March, Eskimo Joe, You Am I), one can hear the freshness and intimacy of the tunes oozing out of the room. The organic qualities are refreshing and crisp, with a relatively even mix spread across the ten tracks on the album.

The first two tunes off the album open with the title track, Dead Wood Falls and then Peaks And Valleys – two very different sounding and explosive musical movements indeed. The title track simmers into a slow burning Cat Power-esque vocal as Cloher gets all sultry, smoky and pretty damn sexy, before expanding into a tight but floating chorus which features Charlie Owen (Tex, Don & Charlie, The Beasts of Bourbon, Dark Horses etc) plucking away on a nylon acoustic and framing the song, together with the brushstroke drumming.

Peaks And Valleys has a certain bluesy quality to its delivery – but it could be described as alt/country, rock or even pop, but that’s cool, because the song flies high whatever genre it is. There is a real sense of urgency to Peaks And Valleys that I admire about Cloher’s style. Her lyrics are strong, dominant and direct and there just isn’t any room afforded for niceties and/or quirky love songs, as Cloher delivers, ”...lawless never listless/Boy she could knock em’ out/Those fulsome lips/That whiskey grin/That girly swagger sucked them in…”

Old friends and playing partners, Mia Dyson (lapsteel & baritone guitars) and Ross Calia (Rhodes, Piano) appear throughout Dead Wood Falls and give the album added texture. Extremely strong rhythm parts are provided by Geoff Dunbar (bass) and Jen Sholakis (drums), along with most recent guitarist Julien Poulson who seems to be filling in for original axe man Michael Hubbard, who is off doing a roots and blues side thing at present.

Appearing on Dead Wood Falls are The Longing Song and Rain (both off Permanent Marker) and are belted out with the desired effect – particularly the latter which snakes its way along with a husky Cloher vocal and Charlie Owen’s sliding scale work on the dobro guitar, to give Rain a real earthy country twang. We then lead into the tender Carol which is reminiscent (to me) of Cloher’s idol Bruce Springsteen for some reason, as the vocal delivery floats on by nonchalantly, accompanied by the twinkling of keys, thump of the double bass and the slide of the lapsteel guitar.

The final two numbers off Dead Wood Falls feature the talents of Cloher band mate Andrea Sumner on violin as she sets up the mood of the songs with subtle underplaying – and hence gives the track Fingersmith a sort of Irish Gypsy groove to the whole thing. This is great stuff towards the close of the song when the full band kick in with bowed bass, French horns and electric guitars to carry Fingersmith into quite exciting and eclectic territory, and somewhere to aim towards in terms of musical direction for the next Cloher release. Dead Wood Falls is quite a successful debut for Cloher and is a testament to the hard work that she and her band have put in over the past couple of years.

- Nick Argyriou