In Australia there is a strong correlation between making great power pop records and having a proper job. John Rooney of Coronet Blue is an orthopaedic surgeon at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney, and Darryl Mather of the Orange Humble Band is a rugby league player agent.
You would think Mather would be busy enough, it being State of Origin time, but he’s also just released Depressing Beauty, the first Orange Humble Band album since 2001 (and only their third overall). Rooney and Mather don’t just share a love of power pop and taking care of business, they also share fellow traveller band members Ken Stringfellow (The Posies) and Mitch Easter (best known for producing early REM). Depressing Beauty also features Big Star’s drummer, Jody Stephens, and orchestrator, Carl Marsh.
When you’re putting out your first record in 14 years you need to hit it out of the park with the first track. You Close Your Eyes could be from Big Star’s Radio City. The Orange Humble Band are back. Two songs later, Conversations With Myself is the most perfect song about it being 4am and missing that special one since Leonard Cohen and Faron Young were mining the same hour for heartbreak. The strings underscore every despairing line. It sounds like a Jimmy Webb song written for Glen Campbell.
Sowannadoit’s chorus, when read, looks like the cheesiest bubblegum pop since the Bay City Rollers’ heyday – “Sowannadoit, so wanna make it happen now, Sowannadoit, wanna make this love go biff, bang, pow” – but on the record it comes off like a Shakespearean sonnet.
Ain’t Tougher Than Me, subtitled Ode to the King of New York, is a tribute to Lou Reed, though it sounds more like Bob Dylan with Television as his backing band. Despite its provenance, it was written and recorded before Reed died. The album was recorded in late 2012, but Mather is a perfectionist and did not want to release it until the mix was exactly as he wanted it.
If That’s What You Want is the closest thing to Assorted Creams, the Orange Humble Band’s first album and rated the eighth greatest power pop record in Shake Some Action: The Ultimate Power Pop Guide. (Something Or Other, by Mather’s previous band The Someloves, comes in at 15 ).
But if Assorted Creams concentrated on the pop side, Depressing Beauty, like its predecessor Humblin’ Across America, is a many splendoured thing. Oughta Feel Ashamed is the kind of country rock the Rolling Stones were doing on Exile On Main St, while Emma Amanda is a 60s-style folk song. It’s also the only song here not sung by Stringfellow. It’s sung, and co-written, by his Posies bandmate Jon Auer.
With The Universe In My Hand is the other side of the 60s – a near seven-minute long psychedelic journey, with not a second wasted. Depressing Beauty is a long album, two seconds shy of an hour. For most bands that’s too much. With The Orange Humble Band, it’s barely enough.
- Depressing Beauty is out now on Citadel Records in a limited edition of 1,000 copies
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