Gentle. Thoughtful. Meditative. Subtle. Apologies for the racial slur, but none of these are words I’d associate with Australians. I met a spare Australian over the weekend who informed me that not only was the barbeque, “not a fucking barbeque, it’s a fucking grill” but that her countrymen were, “a bunch of fucking convicts.” Surprisingly, however, all of the nice words above (not the fucking convicts) can be easily associated with Aviator Lane.
It might be the time of year, but I found the whole thing rather affecting. There are moments when you can imagine Aviator Lane as a Belle and Sebastian raised in constant dry heat rather than drizzle, then produced by TV On The Radio (especially on the oddly euphoric ‘Comfort Is Shifting’). Male vocals offset by spiritual sounding female harmonies, over a backdrop of dense but basic drum loops, simple droning electronics (best used on the ominous ‘The Calm We Left’), sparse acoustic guitars (which do occasionally lapse into Crowded House territories) and minimal piano chords. Layers of these components work to create a quilted comforting world where it’s easy to get lost.
It’s clearly stuff borne of the New Wave Of Bedroom Recording (‘We Found The Colony…’ being recorded with one mike and a desktop PC), but like any medium with such immediate connections to it’s muse, this gives it an emotional resonance untapped by studio based artists.
