ALBUM REVIEW: SENTIMENTALISM - THE SLINGERS
Photography: Julia Enter
Often I think the only things separating us from the modernists are sliced bread, dishwashers and dating apps. While we’re not emerging from the shadows of a destructive Great War, we are still using art, literature and music as a platform in which to air grievances and make sense of the newest episode of the Twilight Zone that seems to be a day in the life of a human living in 2023.
In the first chapter of his 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, whose erotica often eclipses its value as a powerful anti-war and anti-industry text, DH Lawrence referred to this confounding post-war period as a ‘tragic age,' an age where we are stumbling through a ‘cataclysm among the ruins.’ And although he was referring to mass post-war devastation, it would be silly and futile to not draw parallels between us and them; COVID was an upheaval of order and functionality on every account, our planet is wailing out to be saved, AI is an unstoppable enemy who never sleeps, we walk the tightrope towards ecological disaster after the hottest summer on record, a misogynistic man with tangerine coloured hair refuses to take a hint, Hawaii and Crete are on fire, and Sinead O’Connor is dead.
Even the author Martin Amis, who could be argued as a post-modernist, spoke of a ‘pregnant widow’ – a transition period between cultural revolutions. From the early 1970s until his very recent death, he always gave a zany insight into messy and tangled modern love.
Amis borrowed this definition from the 19th-century Russian writer Alexander Herzen, who defined a ‘pregnant widow’ as the space between an old order giving away and the birth of a new age. He said the departing old world gives us not an heir, but a pregnant widow – “a long night of chaos and desolation” while we wait for the new order to come to fruition.
Again, parallels can be drawn to our current age, as hope coexists with chaos. We seem to be on the precipice of immense positive change, noted through an empowered younger generation, fewer of us turning to conservative politics as we grow older, and people now viewing incorporating sustainable practices into their lifestyles as not an ‘if’ but a ‘when’ and a Voice to Parliament on home soil that has the potential to herald in change and reconciliation that is 235 years overdue. However, this limbo state is frustrating and tiring, even if it’s ripe with promise and anticipation.
And The Slingers, a group of rag-tag, swoon-worthy, romantic bushrangers, well, they refer to this modern age through dualities and dichotomies; an age of both “great compassion and crucifixion” of both “creature comfort and constant pain and numbness,” an overall age of loneliness. And all such frustrations, confusions and elations are captured with poignancy and precision on their debut album Sentimentalism.
Living in the Age of Loneliness
And we’re off! Venturing into what I maintain is this year’s best musical exploration of this limbo state we find ourselves in. This is a knock out opening track that beautifully explains how confusing it is to live and love in our modern world: ‘an age beyond the age of reason.’ I love the cumulative listing of contradictory mindsets in the lyrics that echo the wide spectrum of emotions we experience daily. We feel like we’re on top of the world yet also teetering on the brink of disaster, just wanting to be seen and heard and adored; it’s elation one hour and deep doubt the next.
The lyric ‘the final stage before the change of season,’ mimics Martin Amis’ and Herzen’s reference to this transitory ‘pregnant widow’ phase – right now, we can feel a change of season in the air that is both exciting and daunting.
The power of this track is also demonstrated by the most heartwarming Youtube comment I have ever come across. The first comment on the music video for ‘Living in the Age of Loneliness’ is as follows, without edits, “I am at home in Tijuana Mexico with 2 litres of beer on my own, without company for several years, thinking about my day to day and this song fits me like a glove to feel supported.” I put this to Rob, the band’s lead singer and guitarist, and he outlined how garnering reactions like this is the very point of music.
“I care infinitely more about reaching a stranger like that than about reviews, radio play or acclaim of any kind,” he told me. This response reminded him of Tom Petty’s belief in the magical potency and healing powers of music. Something this powerful that is a vessel for so much good must be treated with love, respect, faith and good humour, and Rob therefore grieves the current industry’s bastardisation and mass production of music.
“Every good songwriter I’ve ever heard talk about their process, like Keith Richards or Shane MacGowan, talks about how songs already exist and you just pluck them out of the air,” he says.
No Harm Done
A rather palatable piano lick builds and builds and lures us into this track featuring the lovely lilt of Naarm-based artist Juice Webster. The lyrics deal with references to the immobilising effects of shame and rage, or on the inverse, how it can propel you into action. Blissful ignorance is also teased with the affirmation ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you, so no harm done.’ The guitar solo that leads us out could almost narrate a car journey as you snake around wide corners and gaze upwards at a canopy of trees.
‘No Harm Done’ reveals that no one sounds quite like The Slingers. They’re a fusion of multi-faceted styles and feelings and genres, sounding like a distant memory or a connection to a time and place you didn’t know you had. So, what drives the band? They draw on anything and everything that excites or moves them, however, the band watched the films and television shows of Adam Curtis such as Hypernormalisation during the writing of Sentimentalism.
“Curtis’ films explore the strangeness of the new world we live in and our inability to really comprehend it,” says Rob.
“I believe that the majority of people in the west do not, or perhaps cannot, see the world as it really is today for a variety of reasons.”
The band found this idea appealing, of using music to explore people flailing through an alien landscape and yearning for nostalgia.
Down to the Bone
Oh, how I adore this track. What a gorgeous wall of sound, a searching and mournful song with a faraway nostalgic feeling – it could be an 1980s power ballad break up anthem. It curses how tenuous and unstable love can be, how fleeting and temporary and why it can come and go without question or reason. ‘Come to me baby, reap what you have sown…don’t try to roll me back, I am not made of stone’ – love can dismantle us to nothing but atoms.
More than anything, ’Down to Bone’ demonstrates The Slingers’ penchant for chronicling modern heartbreak through gut-wrenching lyrics and sound - a mournful synth or a drum beat that mirrors a slow heartbeat. And it’s heartbreak in a myriad of forms: for a person – platonic, romantic or familial – a place or a feeling. Heartbreak that is carnivorous to your soul; that makes your bones dully ache, your stomach churn, that leaves a constant niggling pain in your sternum and affects your posture. It renders you useless, glum and uninspiring. You accidentally put the kettle in the fridge and you forget to wash your hair and brush your teeth.
I was curious to know what is the best thing someone has ever told The Slingers about heartbreak. And perhaps, as Rob suggested to me, heartbreak does not need to be tinged with negativity.
“Life is inherently heartbreaking – to live open heartedly invites the odd broken heart. It comes with the territory… you just have to hope it's worth it in the end,” he says.
Deep melancholy and raw, lurid pain come from merely being open to the world in whatever way, shape or form.
Raising the Dead
A beautiful, sweet guitar riff welcomes us into ‘Raising The Dead’, a riff that I see exuding almost a quintessentially Australian sound – light and joyous, and when paired with the soft and velvety harmonies of the chorus, packs a punch. The lyrics seem to navigate failed promises made during a relationship. An unnamed ‘she’ implies that the narrator’s gift of love was insufficient, and that the situation is possibly so hopeless that she is abandoning the living and instead directing her attention to the dead.
There is a fusion of natural imagery –‘you should have given me a river’ – and allusions to ill-fated American politicians – ‘look like Nixon, feel like JFK’ – in chronicling how occasionally making someone love you, and sustaining that love, is impossible, and that the superhuman feat of resurrecting the dead would be an easier task.
Someday Sister
This track gives Rob’s vocals centre stage, as he is accompanied by only a piano, a guitar and the low murmur of a synth. The opening piano riff bears similarities to those found on Joni Mitchell’s Blue, particularly ‘River.’
‘Someday Sister’ is pungent with emotion, speaking of a sadness that penetrates the soul ‘way down below’. It seems to be a message to someone who is immensely struggling, alongside a desperate plea for them to endure – ‘don’t go breaking down on me just yet.’ There are also numerous religious and spiritual allusions – “I keep a vigil for you down in my soul…god has his reasons…prayers answered”.
A guitar riff with an almost tropical sound, akin to Speedy West’s track ‘Rippling Waters’, serenades us out, which on paper reads like unusual musical fusion, but it works so damn well.
It’s Something
I don’t know one person who hasn’t absolutely loved this track. It’s a different leap forward for the band, but done with such effectiveness and zest.
To say this track oozes New Order and The Cure energy is an understatement. Greg’s vocal tones and intonations even display likeness to Mark Seymour during the Hunter’s and Collectors early era. Before developing the track that would come to be associated with the AFL premiership, the Hunnas’ tracks ‘Junket Head’ and ‘Talking to a Stranger’ boasted more of a new wave sound, with jagged synths and slow drumming.
I can also imagine ‘It’s Something’ appearing on the Peaky Blinders soundtrack, known for splicing anachronistic tracks into a show set in the 1920s. There are perhaps subtle references to mobilising to combat the ecological crisis – ‘now that the sky is changing…the wind is raging…we’ve got to move if we wanna keep it here.’
I’ve seen the band perform this track live twice and the crowd loses its mind every time.
Our Last Day in the Sun
This track could be understood through a double entendre lens: if taken at face value it may be an ode to summer, or, a rallying cry for climate action, suggesting our summers will change in form and shape if current methods persist – ‘we’re under guns…seeking shelter from shifting sands.”
There are also references to perhaps a relationship’s last day in paradise and glory, bidding a bittersweet adieu to a honeymoon phase via ‘I guess, we won’t make it through, but you already knew that now, didn’t you?’
Streets of Tokyo
This track is sublime; a synth-saturated, soaring and shimmering wall of new-wave sound. It is also undeniably dance-inducing and makes me want to spread my wingspan as far as my 5 foot 8 frame allows and twirl until I reach head-spinning territory.
The lyrics detail all the difficulties and beauties of loving someone unconditionally. This love shakes and breaks you and causes crippling doubt; except your love for them, which remains doubtless.
This track has an unequivocally cinematic tone. I can imagine it playing during a scene in a movie made about my life over a montage of falling in and out of love. So, what about the swinging Slingers? Who’s soundtracking their life?
Rob is inspired by Neil Young’s soundtrack to the 1995 Jim Jarmusch western-themed film ‘Dead Man.’ Other band favourites include ‘That’s Us’ by Arthur Russell, Bob Dylan’s ‘I Want You’ and ‘M.E’ by Garry Numan. This is a certifiably stellar lineup and I would expect nothing less from this band.
Love is Not Enough
The powerful and robust piano returns in this track which seems to narrate domestic scenes – “evening news…I leave the TV on…we’re so embarrassed by our dreams.” There are elements of slow paced yacht rock, almost ballad-esque.
The lyric ‘this is 2021, just relax, everything has been done’, also alludes to pandemic or lockdown existentialism. Additionally, the mouth-wateringly gorgeous lyric of ‘racking the ridges of my brain…searching its corridors in vain,’ suggests a major mining into the inner mechanics of your soul for answers when things seem answerless.
There is a sway-inducing guitar solo hallway through, and I predict that when the band plays this live, people will move rhythmically, pint glasses raised in salute.
The Needle and the Nine to Five
We farewell the band through a track that is nearly seven-minutes-in-heaven long, with a title that reminds me of a track by the ambient titan Brian Eno – ‘Needle in the Camel’s Eye’, the opener on his album Here Come the Warm Jets.
What a satisfying end; the elements of this final track are perfectly mixed and curated. When listening with headphones on, the song wraps around you. There are anti-capitalist references – ‘you never get what you want the most, you can only have what they sell you’ – and allusions to agonising 'fever dreams and bad routines’. This track, and the whole album really, is a mirror reflecting all the triumphs and failings of our modern world; love, heartbreak, the climate crisis, Australia’s confused national identity and an unforgiving capitalist society.
If we can take any comfort from the original riz-lord himself DH Lawrence, he followed up his sobering assessment of the world as a ‘cataclysm among the ruins’ by saying that although tragedy and hopelessness is all consuming and that there is no smooth and linear road into the future, ‘we must go round or scramble over the obstacles…we’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.’
And The Slingers remind us of that too, that we must push on, step by step, and love despite emptiness.
Check out tour dates of the The Slingers here! They are taking the East Coast by storm over the next two months, and have recently gained a new keyboardist post-album, Odessa Kemp.