The Paradise Motel

“This happened one evening” … A band who had not played together for a decade returned to a Melbourne stage to perform their new album Australian Ghost Story, about the disappearance of baby Azaria Chamberlain in the outback, in full.

Understandably, The Paradise Motel appeared nervous as they took to the floor of The Toff. Suitably black-clad singer Merida Sussex was a shy but dominating presence, and it would be a few songs in before they found their rhythm.

Once they did, however, the band moved with graceful assurance through ever-deepening moods, each member intuitively finding their right place. The night was not one for misty-eyed nostalgia. Like Sussex’s voice, The Paradise Motel have become a fuller and deeper outfit, less reliant on their traditional binary, able to find the calm of attack and the swelling aggression of sparseness. Every note was marked by a palpable evocation of enigmatic loss: car lights piercing a reddened dirt road as the driver chases hopelessly after an unknown evil.

And yet all good things fade, and so it was tonight. During the final encore – a genius segue into The Triffids’ ‘Raining Pleasure’ from their own ‘Men Who Loved Her (Grew Sadder)’ – a broken organ was kicked repeatedly; its abuse worked into the song’s climax of noise and fury, before it all returned to quiet. Shortly before, Sussex mentioned that the rhythm section hadn’t spoken for as long as the band had been apart. While met with laughter she admitted that it “wasn’t meant to be a joke”. What was wound up so tight was bound to snap. Still, it’s sad they left, and even sadder they’re leaving once more.

by Lawson Fletcher