100 reviews #15: Amanda Brown

 

Amanda Brown’s Eight Guitars is advertised as her first solo album, which it is and it isn’t – she’s had two soundtracks released under her name (2002’s Incognita and 2008’s Son of a Lion which is twenty mainly short tracks by her and one 16-minute track by another artist). But the case can of course be made that those were commissioned works – designed, I guess, as accompaniments to someone else’s production – and that this is a standalone product for which AB takes sole responsibility. On the other hand, the front cover lists eight names aside from Brown’s – the eight guitarists showcased on each track, which doesn’t negate it as a solo album obviously but instead, to my mind, puts it in another category – I can’t quite get a handle on what that category might be, however. The assertion that it was twenty years in the making is a whole extra bit of strangeness I can’t quite get on top of either.*

 

The danger, to my mind, is that the listener might feel invited not to listen to the songs or their content, but instead understand Brown’s songs on this album (she contributes six originals alongside a cover of ‘The Unguarded Moment’ and a cowrite with Steve Kilbey) as created for these virtuosos (all men, if that’s important) to strut some stuff. Which I’m sure isn’t true. Actually overall the idea seems needlessly complicated, is what I guess I’m actually saying. Why foreground the guitars, rather than the songs? I’m not saying the guitars are not good, but Amanda Brown is a sensational songwriter aside from of course being an excellent instrumentalist herself with major capacity as a player and arranger. (She told Michael Dyer in the SMH on 2 March ‘I much prefer to be a musician backing someone else.’) None of this paragraph is a criticism – it’s only an observation. 

 

My favourite track here (at this early point in what is bound to be many listens to this album in many different contexts) is ‘The Deal’; for what it’s worth the guitarist on this track is Shane O’Mara. What follows it, the cover of ‘The Unguarded Moment’, is a good complement as both are very sparse and rhythm-oriented; drummer for most of the album is the very seasoned and empathetic Hamish Stuart. 

 

By the way, the album sounds tremendous. 

 

*This might be reference to the Kilbey cowrite which dates back to the start of the century.