—Andrew R. Iliff
Graeme Downes
Hammers and Anvils
(Matador Records)
Hooray for Antipodean rock: Sure, it may have all been done before, but these days few can keep the rock idiom alive without sounding dated. And now here’s a charm-filled album by the former frontman of New Zealand band The Verlaines, Graeme Downes. A lecturer in a rock degree program (can you imagine?: Speaking tonight, we have Professor Axl Rose, lecturing on “Teased Hair and Split Ends in Detroit Rock of the mid-1980’s: Hair today, Gone tomorrow?”), this is rock done just right, as the minute-count shows: Barely any of the 13 songs last much longer than the three minutes it takes to arrive, get you smiling, and swing out the door—no overblown rock histrionics or seven and eight minute guitar solos. The songs bubble with a humor that is often abandoned in modern guitar music. One of the highlights is the jazzy “Cole Porter,” which finds the singer “plundering all of Cole Porter this morning/Trying to find me a rhyme half as beautiful as you”—honesty missing from today’s mainstream.
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