The Sydney Morning Herald du lieu suivant : Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 62

RECORDINGS In the southern Gothic tradition iimiifcOft) oasoaimi COUNTRY WSJ 1 ELDER I 1V9 95 itp a classy piece of pop-oriented country rock with Garrett Costigan's pedal steel and Cletis Carr's electric guitar providing clever and subtle backing for Sefton's husky vocals. Letter From America has a wonderful, melancholy feel (greatly enhanced by some plaintive violin from Alex Black) and lyrics which belong to that "she's left me and gone overseas" school of songwriting. Starlet Hall of Fame is a song Steve Earle would be proud of, with jagged violin breaks and a great rocking feel. Prison Walls is a wonderfully understated acoustic ballad and so the 13 tracks proceed. This is a superb debut recording.

It passes that most exacting of all tests: the more you listen to it, the better it sounds. TIM McGRAW: Not A Moment Too Soon. Curb Records Tim McGraw is one of the many young American country singers to emerge in the slipstream of Garth Brooks. On one level this is a very commercial Nashville offering. On another level it is a collection of beautifully crafted country pop songs sung with an authentic twang.

Like Brooks, McGraw manages to walk a fine line between genres, ensuring that no-one is offended and everyone can find something to admire. Consequently the album ranges from some up-tempo, good ol boy nonsense (It Doesn 't Get Any Countrier Than This, Refried Dreams and Give It To Me Strait), moves through a couple of Brooks-style "lost love" ballads (Wouldn't Want It Any Other Way and Not A Moment Too Soon) and adds an excellent story song (Indian Outlaw) and a neat piece of sentimental nostalgia (Don't Take the Girl). This is pure, cover-all-bases-at-all-costs commercialism. It is hard not to feel that this is a recording made to a well-established formula. All that McGraw offers is pretty-boy good looks and a sweet twangy country voice.

The instrumentation comes from some of the most sought-after Nashville session musicians, the songs have all been written by songwriting teams, and the production is Nashville at its most accomplished. It's easy to dismiss Tim McGraw as a marketing man's dream. It is, however, hard to deny that he has enjoyed enormous success in the US and that much of the material is catchy and memorable in a pop kind of way. IRIS DE MENT: My Life. Warner Bros It is hard to work up much enthusiasm for the whine-and-rave school of female country singing.

The more sensitive, and more measured, singing styles of kd lang, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris and the raw, bluegrass simplicity of Alison Krauss are far more appealing than Dolly, Reba, Tammy and the rest of the glitzy brigade. Iris De Ment's style, first articulated on the extraordinary 1992 CD, Infamous Angel, hovers somewhere between bluegrass and folk. It's a kind of southern Gothic approach, full of nostalgia but rooted in everyday experiences rather than "love gone wrong" tomfoolery. De Ment belongs to that rich seam of American, country-inflected folk music which finds its finest manifestations in the songwriting and singing of people such as John Prine and Nanci Griffith (both of whom are gratefully acknowledged on the sleeve notes), Townes Van Zandt and the early Lyle Lovett It's a seam which depends on acute observations about the minutiae of everyday life and a willingness to evoke an essentially rural and nostalgic vision of America where, as de Ment says in Sweet Is The Memory, "the dance floor's for gliding" and "an arm's just an arm till it's wrapped 'round a Too often this style of country music is misunderstood. It actually belongs to an American cultural tradition which includes writers as diverse as Sam Shep-ard, Raymond Carver, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Eudora Welty.

It is, as John Prine observed on the sleeve notes of Infamous Angel, "about isolated memories of life, love and The end result is a collection of songs which range from the death of a father (No Time To Cry), to the joy of dancing (Sweet Is The Melody), evocations of childhood (Childhood Memories) and the painful ordinariness of suburban life (Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day). De Ment has a deeply moving voice and she is supported by such luminaries of the country music scene as the producer Jim Rooney and Roy Huskey Jnr on bass; Al Iris De Ment belongs to an American cultural tradition. Perkins on dobro and "Cowboy" Jack Clement on acoustic guitar. BIG WHISKEY: The Distance. Pelican Records The country music media mafia was working overtime recently when Stuart Coupe alerted everyone that a Melbourne group called Big Whiskey, fronted by one-time Slow Club vocalist Andrew Sefton, had released the best country album since The Dingoes.

Big wraps, indeed. There is no doubt that this is a very classy offering. It hovers somewhere between the down-the-line country rock of Steve Earle and lyrical West Coast country ballad styling of The Eagles. In spite of these antecedents, it is sufficiently, distinctively Australian not to be derivative. As a debut album, it is extraordinary in its range and maturity.

This is not a first, tentative offering, but rather a collection of fine songs performed with vitality and panache. Rare for debut albums, it is hard to find a bad track. The title track, The Distance, is JUNO CONCERT Three Concordes just landed in Australia. Ortofon's new Concorde loudspeakers have created a bit of a storm. Since David Frith's recent article, our phone has been running hot! Superbly finished as only the Europeans can do, these speakers have already been highly praised for their Danish drivers, gold plated terminals, ferro fluid cooled tweeters, flared bass reflex ports and a sound quality you would expect only from Ortofon.

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A-ONE ELECTRONICS 432-434 Kent Street, SYDNEY Shop 44, Old Town Centre SMH The Guide, Monday, July 18, 1994 9S.