It’s an irresistable sound and one that we 20th Century boys and girls took in with our mother’s milk.
The Morricone Tex-Mex Western sound that Sydney band The Dusty Ravens so beautifully make, immediately conjures visions of parched badlands, squinting lawmen and torrid tales of the good, the bad and the ugly. As previous generations had thrilled to the legends of the Roman and Greek gods, us post-1950s TV kids had our own myths of redemption, revenge and regret – all highly immoral morality tales full of larger-than-life figures who could shoot a man just to watch him die.
The Dusty Ravens’ new album, Low Down Jimmy, is peopled with such mythic anti-heroes. Co-leader Andy Meehan‘s songs are all exquisitely bijou short-stories about Low Down Jimmys, Suzie Lees and ‘Cavalier cowgirl’s – there is a feeling that the song’s vignette is part of a much greater story, going on out of screen shot. And of course it is – the great tussle between Good and Evil, boiled down for now to one man tracking another across a sun-blasted dust bowl, a lone vulture keeping a glassy eye on them both.
The brass section of co-leader Maggie Raven, Kim Griffin and Jane Grimley works perfectly to evoke these American desert visions, over the top of Meehan’s steel-string acoustic, the double-bass of Catherine Golden and Mark Hetherington‘s drums. The sound is unique and is perfect for everything here – be it driving Mexicali wedding dance, Western ballad or freight-train boogie.
The packaging and presentation of Low Down Jimmy is also unique – instead of opting for the usual CD or download, The Dusty Ravens have presented the album as a 16-page art book with download card. Drummer Hetherington’s artwork is the perfect compliment to the music: scratchy illustrations over parched earth-tone grounds, evoking the dryness and dusty sun blasts of the band’s musical landscape.
A special treat is the lone cover version here – ‘Red Pony’ by David McComb, no stranger to the evoking of high and lonesome wide open spaces himself. It is a beautiful song, saying so much with the barest of means, and as such is in good company on Low Down Jimmy.
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