I’m so much happier than Bodie with the cone on his head. My album is the album of the year at Bandcamp Hunter, an Australian site posting about Bandcamp discoveries. Thank you James Baker. Here is the article –

 

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel-it is, before all, to make you see.” 

Joseph Conrad

Rock and roll can save, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Those who scoff at the power of music simply haven’t been listening to the correct things. When an album comes along that gently places a key in your heart, turns it slowly, opens a reservoir of understanding and feelings that you thought had long gone, colours your world in the prettiest of colours, then you know you are listening to music of real power. Music produced by someone creating something magical, created by someone that deserves to be classed as something higher than an artist. James Irwin is magical.

I’ll admit it, it’s a rare thing these days for me to listen to a full album from beginning to end and truly appreciate every nuance, every subtlety. To appreciate the structuring and sequencing of songs that contribute to said album becoming a cohesive whole. An entire work, ten songs that fit together beautifully and offer something you can sit and listen to and become completely engaged with. A collection of songs that offer something new and fascinating with each listen. I probably don’t appreciate lyrics quite so much anymore either, I don’t obsessively analyse metaphors and messages in songs like I used to. Where these confessions are leading, of course, is to Western Transport. An album that reignited my love of well crafted lyrics and the album as an art from.

Thrown out on the burning road, 

where the wind was moving stones, 

blood pools around my throat, 

like river mud between my toes. 

Let it sink it in. Give it space.

You are on my mind. Are you in my body too? 

When the need goes away will the wanting stay? 

Will you sit seven days hanging on guilty dreams? 

Are you halfway here? Are you halfway to Mexico? 

There’s no way for me to do the quality of these songs justice outside of quoting the lyric. You can listen yourself and read, as these are lyrics that can be read and appreciated on a poetic level. What I can do is expand a little on how they make me feel and what are some of the ideas that lurk within their gently crushing haze.

The reflective quality of these songs from Iriwn are not navel gazing, are not overtly introspective, they are the concise capturing of a vague existential ache that lurks in us all. Music that captures the sad and beautiful feeling of gazing at a glorious sunset, of walking an empty street in the middle of a foggy night and considering it all and nothing at all. Of feeling brutal heartache and wishing it would be gone but understanding this is what we all endure, that this is being alive. “Hearts Like Old Cars” is one of the finest songs I’ve heard in a long, long time. It’s a seemingly simple metaphor that Iriwn uses yet-like the entire album-it is filled with a brilliant swirling depth. The hardening of the heart comes not from cholesterol or double down burgers, but is generated gradually from disappointment, from unrequited love, from too much of life.

Without you I’d be out on a prairie, under a plain blue sky 

with my steady eyes, steady mind, steady rolling, steady engine. I’d drive all night. 

Hearts like old cars, breaking down, breaking down. 

Everybody is haunted, and you cry and cry, never satisfied. Never satisfied.

The longing here is bittersweet and real but there is more to these songs than heartache borne of love gone wrong. These are songs that of an artist that is looking at people, looking at how we live, considering how we all think and feel. It is songwriting that posses a power that I rarely find in music, a power usually found only in the greatest literature.

Tie my friends down to their beds 

Tie my loves down to their beds 

Let these crazy birds fly from their heads 

Put me back in old orange town where we drink alone and go home 

Cause we are up in the middle of the night 

Ringing bells, shining searchlights 

The master asked for a word to pass, 

We don’t have it anymore 

They are words that stop me, that slow time and gently shift gears in my head to different places. To better places. There’s humour in these songs too, quite often I find myself smirking at some of the wonderful, strange imagery within the lyrics. The meandering, otherworldly ”Anyone To Serve” is a softly flowing spring of enchanting words, backed by peculiar sounds that sound something like a passing of miniature steam ships.

Now you’re lying on a lion fur, telling me what you deserve. You wrap your lips around a blur of words, strangest thing I ever heard. 

How can anyone, listen to anyone, who’s got their luggage lying all around the room. Love somebody like a child would do. 

As if anybody’s blind with faith. As if there’s anyone to serve. 

Irwin alludes to big questions of faith here but the disarming humour of “How can anyone, listen to anyone, who’s got their luggage lying all around the room” is the work of an artist at play, of a supreme lyricist. Then there’s the (non) appearance of Alice…

Everyone this is Alice, Alice this is everyone. She came all the way from Baltimore with me, and the only one who can see her is me. 

Though they tell me she was never even there, I will carry clothes for Alice to wear, as if anybody’s blind with faith, as if there’s anyone to serve. 

I find these lines so funny and fascinating. They are some of the final words of the album and they leave you confused, exuberant and utterly delighted. In these songs Irwin has created a work of art that can be returned to time and time again. An album that you can pick up like that old paper back you love so much and be transported, be given faith in life, be gently reassured that everything is ok and find affirmation that the world is-despite it all-a terribly beautiful place.

Don’t waste your mind. We die all the time.