DAVE'S DIARY - 9 JANUARY 2005 - T BONES CD REVIEW

T BONES
LOWDOWN (CORDUROY)
BIRTH AND DEATH

Birth and death have rarely been staples in the diet of seasoned Sunraysia spawned band, T Bones. But, now 17 years down the Western Highway, the passing of time and relatives have impacted on the co-founders. The band kicks off its acclaimed but belated seventh album with a humorous homily about a life long drifter who morphs into a cane road on Moving On.

But then it's time to pause and reflect on the passing of guitarist Charlie Wilde's sister in Big World Now and blossoming of singer Andre Pupillo's daughter in Lila May.

Pupillo delves further into parenthood triumphing over the climactic extremities in the metaphor of Summer Days.

There's also a dab of soul searching in Wilde's mortality tale I'd Die For That and the healing hand of time in his title track.

That haunting self-doubt also inhabits Pupillo penned Loneliness.

But it's the social chasm of two former friends that is the focus of Wilde tune People Like You.

"We both came from the same small town/ you moved up when we moved down/ you caught the plane, I took the bus/ same direction the two of us."

GOODBYE LOSER

A sibling song of sorts for Wilde's Goodbye Loser where a femme fatale chooses Jack Daniels ahead of the character's beer in her new romantic romp. "She said goodbye loser, I got a brand new man/ he opens the bowling and you're 12th man." The T Bones blazed a hedonistic trail of life on the cutting edge in the rural and urban fast lane on earlier albums. They return on Wilde's Across The Bridge where the shotgun toting, speed-snorting anti-hero shoots the pursuing police posse who land in the river as the villains flees across the Queensland border. So you might ask - that's your an opinion on the songs, what's the music like? T Bones>

Well, the instrumentation of dual guitarists Wilde and James Stewart, bassist Hugh Martin and drummer Miles McNichol compliments the melancholic mood swings of the songs.


And Ed Bates pedal steel and Bruce Haymes and Michael Bryant on Hammond organ sizzle - especially in Across the Bridge. - DAVID DAWSON

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