Angus & Julia Stone
Down the Way
13 Track, LP (2010, EMI)
Related: Angus & Julia Stone.
Down The Way is the epitome of background music. It’s the kind of record devoured by upper middle-class households and paraded out at dinner parties as its soundtrack, so the hosts can boast that they’re au fait with modern pop music. If anything, this second offering from the coastal siblings is even more MOR than its predecessor, 2007’s A Book Like This. At least that album had some grit and drive behind its acoustic surf-folk, even if it was riding the wave of Jack Johnson’s bastardised amalgam of Ben Harper and Bob Dylan.
Every effort is made on behalf of the duo to make this album as inoffensive as possible. The listless, lackadaisical vocals of both Angus and Julia shouldn’t be mistaken as ennui though, that’s actually how they sing; soft drawls that rarely modulate from a set range of notes. Down The Way opens with ‘Hold On’, a song that could be grand and bombastic if only it could get out of first gear. Just like ‘Big Jet Plane’ or ‘And The Boys’, added layers of sweeping strings or plaintive piano are employed to try and bolster the track’s diminutive presence. Julia does her best eight-year-old impression on ‘Hold On’, as she does right throughout Down The Way; her earnestness overshadowing what emotional content there is. Her songs are the darkest on the record, mostly revolving around her breakup with the Stones' long-term drummer Mitch Connelly. ‘For You’, originally written for Connelly, would have a nice emotional juxtaposition where it not for Julia’s quivering impish voice that takes away from a song that features a sullen, beguiling acoustic guitar.
Angus is far more laconic with his words but just as attenuated. He does his best Don Henley impression on the overindulgent ‘Yellow Brick Road’, and tries to make me believe he’d actually chat up a girl in ‘Big Jet Plane’, but I’ve got my doubts. Platitudes like, “Gonna take you for a ride on a big jet plane”, come across pretty empty. Yet it’s the Angus-led tunes on Down The Way that are the strongest – and one even has the word “fuck” in it! ‘On The Road’, like the name alludes to, is the kind of bluegrass tune that would be used in a movie scene set in parched, sunburnt Midwest America. And even if ‘Black Crow’ has lifted its bass lick from another song, it at least delivers some distortion, presumably a throwback to Angus Stone’s blighted solo project of last year, Lady Of The Sunshine.
These musical anomalies aside, Down The Way is an altogether difficult record to engage with. There’s not a lot that entices you in. Rather, you’re presented with a beautifully rendered artefact, like a feature wall in a lounge room. Sure it’s pretty, but it has aesthetic value only, rather than any functional purpose.
This time around, the duo isn’t playing surf-folk, pop-folk or stoner-folk. This is 21st century soft rock, but even calling it “rock” feels specious. If Angus & Julia Stone are jonesing for Australia’s answer to The Captain & Tennille with Down The Way, they’re heading in the right direction.
by Dom Alessio
more cap'n and tennille than delaney n bonnie
that was a question.
I'd kill for someone to be do something approaching Delaney and Bonnie these days.
Not a great record by any means, but I did think it was more engaged with the outside world than the last one.
After hearing Angus Stone on Triple J lately wanking on about his music in that irritating fey fucking stoner-surfer drawl for 10 minutes at a time, i can quite safely say i have no urge to listen to this album.
Haha! I have 2 of their CD's here. I haven't had an urge to listen to either of them. My sister wanted them for her birthday. She's 16. She'll learn in time.
I like their old stuff better than their new stuff.
Never heard em'
Seriously I just don't want to aye. I might have to turn off something else I actually like to listen to them.
i like angus song's in particular. dude is clearly a massive, massive stoner.
funny that dom mentions the lady of the sunshine record in regards to ''black crow'', given that the obvious single ''big jet plane'' first appeared on that album.
angus song's? angus' songs
And the winner of the 2010 AMP is...
There is nothing worse than music that is inoffensive like this. A complete fucking pile of beige.
I'm enoying this as the flip side to the White Cop arguments.
We're offensive and tasteless - love us !
We're inoffensive and easy to love - love us !
He's like, SOOOOOOOO hot!
yeah, totally. He's like the only hot grown up like, ever.
dontcha mean:
We're offensive and tasteless - love us !
We're inoffensive and easy to love - hate us !
?
Heh heh. I early didn't read this gem of a review due to my dislike of this kind of music. Full marks to Mr Alessio for making it all the way through this record and then being able to come up with something to say about it.
If I were ever to review anything I didn't like I'm not sure I would be bothered.
I keep thinking every time I read the EG in Friday's Age that it must suck for Mathieson to have to constantly review trollop like Gabriella Cilmi and Miley Cyrus.
early = nearly
i reckon it's the most fun.
Thanks for the concern, Steve, but I'm doing fine. I cover a variety of music, which I prefer, and the pop element is fascinating to me for the way the artists relate to their music, their intent and the way commercialised expression can often carry unexpected truths. All indie rock would be a dull existence.
The start of this review has been bothering me all day; the opening is absolute rot:
''Down The Way is the epitome of background music. It’s the kind of record devoured by upper middle-class households and paraded out at dinner parties as its soundtrack, so the hosts can boast that they’re au fait with modern pop music.''
The ''upper middle-class households'' is a nice opening gambit, but it's just a snappy, worthless generalisation that serves to pass judgment on a record because of its perceived fanbase. You don't judge music on who likes it or buys it, you judge it on its merits. Musicians don't choose their mass audience and to lash them for it is to take a cheap shot (and, if we're playing at demographics, don't they have a primarily younger, JJJ_friendly audience anyhow?)
In 1995 you could have written that: ''Portishead's Dummy is the epitome of background music. It’s the kind of record devoured by upper middle-class households and paraded out at dinner parties as its soundtrack, so the hosts can boast that they’re au fait with modern pop music.'' Does anyone care about the audience, generalised or not, for that album now? Stay focused on the music.
Also, why is it the epitome of background music? Doesn't that imply the absence of character, of decisions, of personality - in other words a negation - when the rest of the review lists the very decisions and idiosyncratic qualities that the critic believes they got wrong. If it's background music why talk about Julia's break-up and how that inspired a song? Doesn't that imply a whole set of distinct inputs that take it away from the muzak dig?
Like I said above, not a great record, but I liked it slightly more than the first. I'm not criticising the review's opening to defend Angus and Julia Stone, I'm criticising the review's opening because the first two sentences are bullshit - they're not criticism at all, they're weak cliches. Yes, they go down well here because the artist in question is an easy target, but I always hoped, and generaly believed, that M+N could be better than that.
school is in session!
Surely m & n could devote it's time to albums it's readers would actually listen to rather than coughing up what us a fairly predictable review of a predictable album. I can't see this same review being published in j mag.
doesn't dom write for j mag?
I actually find her voice pretty offensive.
word
It's not a review as such but it seems like Dom Alessio has given a different view of the album on the Home and Hosed website
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/homeandhosed/blog/s2843277.htm
He says:
I wonder if that's a backyard in a upper middle class household?
Thought as much
I like my generalisations snappy and worthless.
busted.
this is an exciting new era of demographically-sensitive music criticism.
So this was Triple J's album of the week? Was that in spite of or because of the upper middle class dinner party audience the album allegedly has?
The full Triple J blog post:
''If you've had your radio on triple j at all this week, then you've probably heard Angus & Julia Stone. After all, they do have the feature album: their second (or sophomore as the Americans would say) record, Down The Way. Recorded in a variety of different locations - a sawmill in Cornwell, a studio in Brooklyn, a water tank in Coolangatta - Down The Way sees the Stones maintain their natural love for tight melody, languorous rhythms and coying vocals. It's one of those albums that you listen to on a sunny Sunday afternoon, lazing around in the backyard.
There are some beautiful moments on Down The Way, and there are a lot of darker moments too, particularly those songs written by Julia. Don't let the imp[ish vocals fool you: there's heartache in her cadence. But the song I want to talk about is 'Big Jet Plane'.
This was originally found on Angus' solo record of last year, released under the moniker Lady of The Sunshine. It was Angus' attempt to break out of the low-and-lazy acoustic realm, and although he showcased another side of his musical personality, it never really sat right with me. So it's intriguing that they've decided to resurrect the song, rearrange it and add it to Down The Way. But this new version sits really well within the context of the album. A simple tale of love at first sight, the chugging guitars are a nice counterpoint to the sweeping violins. As usual, Angus doesn't do much with his vocals, but they are hypnotising in their own lackadaisical way.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to recline by a beach. Or at least pretend I am.''
a sawmill in cornwall? reckon that'd be sawmills, in cornwall.
ffs.
When I was in Grade Four I tried to impress my classmates by telling them that a musical I'd been listening to had ''swear words'' in it.
oooh! what musical was that? lend us a cassette of it!
It was Sondheim's Assassins. Unsurprisingly, I had no friends.
Bwahahah!!! awesome story clem. :-)
must be terribly hard to write well/honestly as well as host triple j's catch-all Australian music show. I get the feeling mr alessio would always prioritise the first thing, just a pity that he has to crowdplease doing home and hosed.
number one on ARIA's album charts.
the last album went platinum and so will this.
I quite like it.
i think the Stone audience is a bit broader than dinnerparty hosts then, upper-middle class or otherwise.
must concur that class based criticisms are cringeworthy, and make my skin crawl for sheer icky unpleasantness.
i saw them a couple of years ago at falls festival. your average bogan was digging it. weirdly they also seem to have very decent UK PR coverage. I guess the photogenic bro/sis angle works a treat there
I really don't think this review is limiting their audience to upper middle class dinner parties. He's just saying ''it's the kind of''.
Seriously this band is sooo bad that any time they are criticized in public and it may help some poor saps to realize they should stop listening to them, that is always a good thing, even if the reviewer had to write different reviews on different sites, i say good work sir!
I mean Angus & Julia Stone are so bad its almost criminal that Richard Kingsmil plays them.
bz reviews the live show last week
Beige against the machine: time for sweet siblings to inject some energy
REVIEWED BY BERNARD ZUEL
March 29, 2010
ANGUS AND JULIA STONE
Metro, March 26
WHO IS going to listen to a complaint at this point in the musical lives of Angus and Julia Stone? At the beginning of the week their second album, Down The Way, was comfortably at No.1. At the end of the week they had three sold-out shows at the Metro, including a matinee on Saturday for their under-age fans.
The not-much-older fans crowding into the Metro on Friday night were particularly passionate devotees who knew not just every song but every quirk of the Stones. And many of them wanted to share that devotion: two couples behind me spent most of the show loudly, boorishly, comparing their desires for one or other of the siblings.
So, from any reasonable perspective you would have to say that the Stones are doing everything right. And to top it all they're so clearly sweet, charmingly self-effacing, gentle-as-lambs people. The type of loved-up Samaritans who would make you a cup of tea and bandage you if you cut yourself while breaking into their house.
Which is lovely and all, but, well, that's the problem. From melodies to chat, from lyrics to drive, they are so mild they verge on the infuriating, so gentle as to be in danger of drifting. You want to get in their faces and say, you can do more you know, you can grab this life and these songs and make them work for you, not just float along.
This isn't some suggestion that Angus and Julia get aggressive or loud or filthy - that would be stupid for its falsity alone. It is, though, a plea for some drive, energy, push. Pretty and laid-back can only work for so long; sometimes you've got to make a move yourself, and the Stones don't seem capable of it yet.
It used to be that Julia's songs were the freak folk component to Angus's surfer dude contribution, the result at worst offering energy by contrast. But now they meet in a common ground more like the Christopher Cross/Seals and Croft end of '70s California than the Neil Young/Laura Nyro end they probably desire.
Consequently, there is a musical beige that drifts across the stage. It's not fatal, it doesn't make the songs any less tender and attractive, but it does make Angus and Julia Stone feel more like genteel afternoon tea than a meal that can sustain you.
I think that this cd is brilliant. and I cant believe all of you people, bagging the shit out of these two..... they are very tallented people and looks like they have done far better than any of you. jealousy is a terrible thing for people to have.
why is one automatically considered to be 'jealous' of a commercial band's success just because they think that they're a pile of shit?? by that measure I'm extremely jealous of the cat empire and hilltop hoods.
angus and julia can just fuck right off.
yeah, all the way to Israel.
no thanks. we got enough stinking hippies over here.
nothing a year in the IDF wouldn't fix.
as target practice....
harsh but fair.
(Anti-)fan (non-)fiction