Augie March- Moo You Bloody Choir

Can an album sound too good?
Outside of the possibilities of artists sacrificing the soul or sturm und drang of their music by relying on studio technology, overdubs and the lure of big name producers, can the fulfilling of a long-held promise by a band be too good to be true?

That's what I've been pondering after spending several listenings to Moo You Bloody Choir, Augie March's third album. It's the follow-up to two acclaimed albums of which Sunset Studies, the debut was like a miniature of songcraft, subtle in its arrangements and lyricism. Second album Strange Bird made a stride forward but was not quite the releasing of all of the band's powers- that is left to this one. Recorded in several locations, including two tracks in San Francisco with producer Eric Drew Feldman and several in Melbourne with renowned studiocrat Paul McKercher it already exhibits the 'big dream fulfillment' for the band. The cover art is exquisite and lush, so is the booklet, the production and the arrangements.

MYBC is like the progression that Something For Kate made, from the shy-ish debut Elsewhere For Eight Minutes via the more adult Beautiful Sharks to the Trish Schoenmaker-produced big album Echolalia. The latter shimmered with great songs from a confident band. Or take Powderfinger's progression from the acclaimed Double Allergic to the accomplished Odyssey No. 5. Good album but it doesn't hold up after so many listens to its predecessor.

The title comes from vegetarian Glenn Richards' experience of living right next to an abattoir where the mournful mooing of cows being led to the slaughter greeted him in the morning, as he prtrays that scenery in The Honey Month. It's an example of the way Richards pens down the sketches he made of (his) life. His observational poetry has not changed. Neither has the fact that he has a great voice- clear and at times remiscent of a young Tom Petty without the twang. Musically this album is the most diverse of the three. Opener One Crowded Hour shows the band at its best- great melanchomelodic mid-pacer, nicely built up and blessed with the opening lyric that sets the tone for the rest of the album: "Should you expect to see something that you hadn't seen in somebody you've known since you were sixteen?If love is a bolt from the blue then what is a bolt but a glorified screw that doesn't hold nothing together?”
The lyrics are firmly Australian, yet the melancholy employed on more than one occasion sounds American. It should pose no problems for a breakthrough there as there's eighties Tom Petty-references heard in songs like Stranger Strange or the quirky Just Passing Through, the New Orleans funeral waltz that opens The Honey Month or the picked banjo in Thin Captain Crackers. But the most Australian does Augie March sound in the ballads- Bottle Baby with its fatalistic drugs 'n drink-lore is gorgeous and songwriting of high caliber and Bolte And Dunstan Talk Youth has this grainy, sandlike quality in the music about it that at times gets invaded by dreamy keyboards that shine through like the Southern Cross in a dark night.

This is Augie March's big album. Nice big shiny production, great cover art with its also nice and shiny lettering. I'm playing it now and it's fantastic but I wonder how long it'll take before the gloss will come undone and make me reach for Sunset Studies one more time. For now I enjoy the ride...immensely.

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