River Mirrors
Returning to a band format after years of solo work, Jamie Hutchings uses Infinity Broke as a vehicle for leaping off into the unknown, writes DOUG WALLEN.
It’s right around the time Jamie Hutchings sings from the perspective of a hideous ?three-eyed monster?? a man with a face so gruesome that to reveal it is ?to see a man break like a branch, to see children soil their pants at the sight of me? – that it’s hammered home just how intense Hutchings can be with his newfound band, Infinity Broke.
Of course, you’d have already gotten a substantial hint during the strangled guitar solo of opener ?Gallows Queue? (not to mention the lyrics), while ?Swing a Kitten? is pretty damn riotous too. Easy listening? Not by a long shot.
But as much as this album plays like a worthy bookend to The Drones? raging, monumentally bleak I See Seaweed, it’s tempered with a sweetness that never quite abandons it. During ?No Mirrors?, the aforementioned song about a horrific visage, the tale is delivered with arguably a vocal blitheness over an almost happy-go-lucky, junkyard-country groove that sounds more like the soundtrack to a hoedown than to a nightmare. There are even Harmony-esque four-piece backing vocals, while that closing line about soiled pants is clearly relished by Hutchings. It may be black, but it’s humour nonetheless.
So there’s always some flicker of light, whether in a piercing melody or charming vocal inflection or even in the relentless drive of the band’s rhythm section, which turns a long stretch of the nearly-12-minute centrepiece ?Monsoon? into a Krautrock-y midnight drive. Back in a ?proper? band format after years of solo work since Bluebottle Kiss split up, Hutchings makes a point of using the band as a means of freedom, not restraint. It’s a vehicle for leaping off into the unknown, whether from breezy pop airs to demented catharsis mid-song or into the epic reworking of Bluebottle Kiss? ?Let the Termites Eat our Riches? that is ?Termites? (also a duet with his pianist sister Sophie). He makes a point, from song to song, of surprising himself as well as us.
?It’s a brazen rock album courting danger without a safe word.?
Usually it’s a newly minted solo artist that prizes such freedom to explore, but for Hutchings it’s with his longtime collaborator (and brother-in-law) Reuben Wills on bass, his former BK bandmate Jared Harrison on drums and his brother Scott on drums, percussion and guitar. They made this album without shouldering much weight by way of expectation, cutting 70-plus minutes of material with engineer Chris Colquhoun in a former shearing shed in rural NSW and then crowdfunding and releasing it themselves – a first for Hutchings.
Maybe it’s too far of a reach to read the album itself as a similar blowing-out of one’s comfort zone, considering Hutchings? rich past with these bandmates, but all the music points in that direction. Born from improvisatory twists and bludgeoned with wayward percussion – spanning the windblown climax of ?Monsoon? right through to the masterfully compact storytelling of ?Napoleon Aged Three? – it’s a brazen rock album courting danger without a safe word. Comfort zones are left buried in the rubble.
Holed up in that shed, pushing his guitar playing and lyrics into meaner depths than ever, Hutchings was probably wondering where Infinity Broke might fit in the broader picture of music in 2014. Would listeners pony up for a jarring, moody, intermittently epic album and take the time to digest it when it’s so easy to just torrent something closer to background music while cueing up some half-baked listicle? Would anyone care about some Sydney band paying homage to the sprawling back pages of Neil Young and Miles Davis rather than obeying the ear-friendly, regimented code for high-rotation airplay? What neat classification would house an album so hell-bent on scrawling outside the lines?
?These aren’t readymade singles, but mysterious passages with a dense inner life of their own.?
As with The Drones, Infinity Broke can seem defiantly old-school simply for having the conviction to, well, have any conviction whatsoever. Why should these bands bother to push their own personal limits, after all, when all you really have to do these days is push the product? But that’s what makes River Mirrors so exciting: these aren’t readymade singles you can figure out in a few seconds and comfortably map out in your head from there, but crooked and mysterious passages with a dense inner life of their own.
Everything on this album is a feast for the pulling apart, from vocals and lyrics to production and arrangements. And by supplying a mood-setting fictional snippet in the sleeve instead of a lyric sheet, Hutchings makes that dissection all the more of a goal. He and the band make us work for our reward, rather than presenting it on a platter.
The only way to get at the heart of what’s happening here? Listen.
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##?River Mirrors? is out now on CD, digital and limited 180g vinyl through Come to the Dark Side Luke/MGM. Launch tour dates below.
Wed, May 7 – Smith’s Alternative Bookshop, Canberra, ACT
Thurs, May 8 – The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine, VIC [w/Machine Translations]
Fri, May 9 – Gasometer, Melbourne, VIC [w/Machine Translations + Jacky Winter]
Sat, May 10 – The Exeter Hotel, Adelaide SA [w/Jamie Hutchings (solo)]
Fri, May 16 – The Loft @ Chevron Island, Surfers Paradise, QLD [w/Tall Tails + David Baker]
Sat, May 17 – The New Globe Theatre, Brisbane, QLD [w/The Stress of Leisure]
Thurs, May 22 – Yours and Owls, Wollongong, NSW
Fri, May 23 – The Lass O’Gowrie, Newcastle, NSW [w/Indian Gun]
Sat, May 24 – The Factory Floor, Sydney, NSW [w/The Holy Soul + Lobsterman]