In early 2006 Jon Auer, dressed all in black with a red tie, stood on an inner-city Melbourne stage demanding tequila shots from the crowd before he would continue to play. It was the first time US power-pop veterans The Posies had played in Australia in a decade; and his adoring audience emptied our their wallets to oblige the thirsty guitarist.
As Auer and front-man Ken Stringfellow - the two creative forces behind the band – belted through a series of mid-90s MTV favourites like Flavour of the Month, Solar Sister and Golden Blunders for well over two hours, it seemed like all was good in the Posies camp.
Then along came Auer’s first full-length solo release Songs From the Year of our Demise. Auer has stated in interviews that the bulk of Songs From the Year of our Demise was written during a dark period in his life; The Posies had broken up (they reformed to release 2005’s Some Kind of Light and have been sporadically touring since) and he was in the midst of a divorce.
As you can imagine, with that as the back-story, Songs From the Year of our Demise was never going to be a particularly happy or easy listen. Gone are the trademark power-pop riffs he drives during his day job, replaced with something full of subtlety and complexity. It does share something with his main band’s body of work, though – the fact that it seeps into your consciousness long after you’ve switched the mp3 player off.
The vast majority of the album is set to stark piano and acoustic guitar. Auer slaved over the album in several different studios over several years but you wouldn’t pick it – it’s a cohesive, well-structured work. Another thing to note is Auer’s striking voice – almost the polar opposite to Stringfellow’s classic radio-friendly tones, Auer’s sugar-coated voice has the ability to melt listeners with a simple turn of phrase. Unfortunately for him, it also means that the simplest, most straight-forward lyrics are unintentionally turned into tales of despair and torture.
Most of highlights appear in the first half of the album. Four Letter Word offers one of the few signs of electric guitar on the whole record and name-checks Anna Kournikova at the same time; it’s back to back with Angelita (“I kept you hidden away seven years to the day, Angelita”) which, in an ideal world, would receive tons of commercial radio play.
The sprawling You Used to Drive me Around is a showcase for Auer’s voice but even as the chorus kicks in and he hits some impressive falsetto marks, there’s still an underlying feel of melancholy.
Six Feet Under, the opening track, reveals more and more upon multiple listens. It’s highlighted by keyboards and what sounds suspiciously like a xylophone and it’s impossible to not be enamoured as Auer croons “it’s OK, it’s alright, we can dig our graves tonight.”
Despite the infrequent, vague references to happiness on the album (Song Noir, a song co-penned with Auer’s current wife Michelle, a founding member of Seattle’s Dear John Letters, was obviously written after many of the other tracks), Songs From the Year of our Demise still feels like an exercise in cathartism for Auer himself. It touches on the loss of childhood, death and relationship break-ups unrelentingly. Surprisingly, this doesn’t equate for an awkward experience for the listener. Rather than feel like we’re intruding on his personal space, we feel like Auer’s simply invited us into his lounge room with a mug of hot chocolate and is pouring out his heart to us.
It’s a slow-burning album, but they’re the ones which stay with you for years.
