The Eastern - Arrows

27 July 2010 by Tom Brookman

Last year this Soulshine Reviewer leapt across the ditch to Aotearoa full of musical optimism after a couple of WOMAD New Zealand festivals and hours of listening to the likes of Kora, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Don McGlashan and Crowded House… my move was going to take me to new waters, filled with a myriad of miraculous musical fish… or something like that. What greeted me in Christchurch was, in fact, New Zealand’s equivalent to Adelaide when great bands’ tour rosters read Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne… Perth! Well, in Adelaide at least there’s a wicked local scene to make up for the tour-void, so I set out to find it here and ran smack bang into a wall made of Drum bricks cemented with Bass mortar. I was Odysseus and Christchurch’s music scene was Troy… sorry, I ran out of fish metaphors.

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I was ready to throw my hands up in despair but some wise dude wrote somewhere ‘seek and ye shall find’… and find I did. In the quiet harbour town of Lyttelton just over yonder hill a small community of folk loving folk provided a respite from the DOOF. Standing at the forefront of this folk revival are Jess Shanks and Adam McGrath and their merry band of travelling minstrels, ‘The Eastern’. For once, my tongue is not firmly planted in my cheek, for travelling minstrels they are, troubadours of the old school, with more miles than a ’73 Kingswood, more gigs than a new computer and a rare ability for telling compelling stories about people and life. In the last 6 months they have played a show almost every second day. Granted, a national tour in New Zealand isn’t quite as many k’s as the Australian equivalent, but in the past year they have done it four times! Amongst that schedule they have toured in the US, re-released two of their old EP’s, cut a 3rd EP and recorded and released their second album, ‘Arrows’.

To their credit, The Eastern still play in their local, Lyttelton’s ‘Wunderbar’. They can even be lured to play small-town community gigs for the promise of nothing more than food, drink and good times! They could easily have departed in search of much greater financial riches; they live in relative musical obscurity in their home city but their musical calibre has been overwhelmingly endorsed by recent opening slots for legends Fleetwood Mac, performing with country music icon Steve Earle and touring with string-band superstars Old Crow Medicine Show. Take these guys to Nashville and you’d have a licence to print money!

The tracks laid down for ‘Arrows’ provide an insight into the demand for The Eastern as a support act for international acts with of a folk/country/blues ilk; even through the tinny speakers of my laptop the LP oozes the energy and feeling that The Eastern bring to their live shows. It’s not a complex philosophy… heartfelt lead vocals, quality vocal harmonies and, depending on their mood, a lonesome smattering of banjo or a steam-train of strings roaring through the night. It’s good, honest music played the way people used to play before video clips got songs to #1, ring-tones made the charts and record labels were about money not music.

Underpinning this record is a sense that ‘we don’t make it like we used to’; the tracks hearken back to musical eras past, starting with the ponderous ‘The Engineer’s Promise’, which could be an early 1950’s pop song. It opens the album as a sort of calm before the storm… hard on its heels is one of the working class anthem numbers with a social conscience, ‘Be True’ which, along with ‘The Needle’s Eye’, seem to channel early Springsteen and Mellencamp with their angsty energy. Springsteen again comes to mind, this time in his folk-chaos ‘Live in Dublin’ guise, as McGrath’s throaty vocals roar through the sea-shanty ‘Union S.S.C’ and the raucous romance of ‘Heart Like a Train’. Even sitting in your chair you feel like stamping your feet!

At the other end of the spectrum, Shank’s vocals on tracks like ‘The Steeple’ and ‘Breaks Like a Love Song’ are, in the words of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, ‘guaranteed to bring you right down’. Full of sweet heartache and a pinch of the gritty despair that Lucinda Williams can bring to a song, the slower tracks punctuated by banjo and steel string provide a nice counterpoint to the energy of the militant up-beat tracks. McGrath also shows his softer side on ‘Gospel’, a poetic love song delivered with delicate acoustic guitar and just a hint of fiddle.

Appropriately, the album ends in the opposite fashion to which it began. Like ‘Winterkill’ and ‘Oh Mystery’ earlier in the album, ‘Tiger Town’, a bluegrass tale of musical escapades, would be right at home on an Appalachian street corner… or in the Wunderbar in Lyttelton, which is where you’re most likely to hear it! If you feel like dancing in your living room then throw one of these on, grab your friend/partner/stranger off the street and start spinning!

Want a bit more of a listen (‘Yes!’ I hear you say)… then check out The Eastern at their Myspace. If you’re really keen then you can truck their album over to the mainland courtesy of Amplifier. Their earlier EP’s and LP are also well-worth a listen.

Get on The Eastern bandwagon early so you can ride it as ‘Arrows’ storms into town with a roar!

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