Georgia Fair EP

21 November 2009 by Max Easton

Hailing from Sydney, Jordan Wilson and Ben Riley, travelling under the name Georgia Fair have released their debut EP to radio success. Playing lazy Sunday afternoon folk, Georgia Fair have a crafted a solid debut.

Potentially the most interesting thing about Georgia Fair is their feat in having cracked high rotation on commercial radio despite being entirely unknown and being musicians in possession of a guitar instead of a DJ. It blows minds. This is all the more impressive considering they’re just two guys from Sydney who have seemingly come from nowhere. Their now very well known single ‘Picture Frames’ has made itself known in a flavoured milk ad, which is a great place to build an EP from. The single that is...not milk. But that would make for an interesting venture.

The EP is, for all intents and purposes…okay. ‘Picture Frames’ is one of those incredibly catchy songs of substance, throwing back to ‘Learn Yourself’ era Beautiful Girls and artists like Alexi Murdoch. Its success is well earned; it’s a really well crafted song. It’s reminiscient of a Sunday afternoon drive, an arvo in a hammock…and shit…just afternoon’s in general. The problem with the EP though, is the following track ‘Real Man Hiding.’ It’s not that it’s a bad song really, it’s just that the sickly vocal effects in the chorus mirroring Imogen Heap’s moments with Frou-Frou are cringe-worthy. Which works fine for them, but it just…well it kinda grosses me out. I do think that this is a personal reaction though, it probably sounds fine to people who drive Hyundai Excel’s with a Frangipani sticker on the rear window.

‘Something Easy’ is a return to form, with a Josh Pyke styled neighbourhood tale of love and such. This is followed by ‘Baby Blues,’ a track with plenty of good moments and the significantly better ‘Juanita.’ The three and a half minute love song ‘December’ is pretty damn alright. ‘December’ is the track that makes this EP worth its weight in polyethylene. Its status as one of the album’s highlights is aided by soaring violin running underneath the formula the band had running for the rest of the EP and is much more accessible by cynics. The secret track wedged at the end of this is pretty swell as well, what sounds like a stripped back live track without the production values that seem to plague the earlier stuff. It has the signature Georgia Fair duo chorus which, on this track, is less pop songstress, and more folk croon. The quality isn’t as great, but it’s much less evocative of the sensation you get on watching a mother coodle her child in public. Which is a strange sensation, because coodle isn’t even a word.

The EP is an impressive debut effort by Georgia Fair, one of which has rightly found its way into the commercial audience. It’s an EP which makes me want to get out and see them play live; it’s perfect festival music, something that would go down superbly well when hungover on a Sunday morning in a natural ampitheatre. I don’t really like the EP and my hunch is that it’s the overproduced play of effects and the loss of what could have been a rawly produced album like Iron & Wine’s ‘The Creek Drank the Cradle’ to reputable consequence. To prove or disprove that, I’d really like to get out and see them play, then maybe I could give this EP a fairer review…but as it stands, considering I have to put a number on it and shit, I don’t really like it…but don’t let that stop you from getting yourself a copy.

Georgia Fair’s self-titled EP is out now through Sony Music.

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