Guy Blackman Adult Baby by: Thomas Mendelovitis Tue:20-May-08 Label: Unstable Ape Year: 2008 WB rating 85 out of 100

The Pretenders’ ‘Stand By You’ just came on the radio, getting me thinking about what makes a romantic song overblown and what keeps it, in indie terms, ‘real’. ‘Stand By You’ is a pretty awesome song, but it’s mostly a relic of commercial radio. I guess what I’m really asking is what makes such songs grate the ears of the more discerning listener? A soaring melody may be a no-no, wariness of yearning sentiments can often keep over-earnestness in check and an associated avoidance of cliché is important. Throughout his debut Adult Baby, Guy Blackman’s take on the romantic song (a less loaded term than ballad, perhaps) is refreshing and revelatory, favouring crisp narrative and personal minutiae over bloated cliché. There is only so much that one can do within the confines of the universal themes of new love, old love, sexuality, aging and, strangely enough, birds, all of which are explored over Adult Baby’s 15 tracks. Winningly, Blackman combines the implied and the direct and in doing so avoids both cynicism and wide-eyed naïveté.

As a music contributor to The Age and head of Chapter Music, Blackman must think about music a lot. His own music is accordingly clever, but it is never too smug for its own good. ‘Act Like You Don’t’, like its title suggests, confronts the need for lovers to keep their distance despite the inherent pain. Reminiscent of the timeless song structure of ‘I Still Call Australia Home’ and built on the rhythm-and-melody piano model, the refrain is a twist on the standard ‘I love you’ message of most ballads – pastoral trumpet, saxophone and clarinet driving the pure message of the song.

Elsewhere, Blackman shirks the I/love/you divide, or at least plays with it a little. The theme of ‘Forever (Our Song)’ – as much about seeing Brian Wilson in concert as a love song – recalls Elton John’s ‘Your Song’, but when John sang “and you call tell everybody, this is your song”, Blackman sings “when he sang ‘I’ve been so happy loving you’”. Thus, the sentiment is repositioned one step away from the protagonist’s – a decidedly post-modern device. This approach is also used on ‘Jonny’, with a female lead vocal from Art of Fighting’s Peggy Frew giving a strangely unsettling effect on an album of ‘Pop Male Vocal’. Like most of the record, the instrumentation on ‘Forever (Our Song)’ is understated but superb; Blackpool Carnival organ swirls forth in the chorus as Blackman is joined by Fabulous Diamonds’ Nisa Venerosa and twangy guitars are introduced. Throughout Adult Baby, vibraphone, horns, strings, Wurlitzer, Hammond and even backwards guitar find their place, all underscoring Blackman’s vocal. These touches ooze charm and recall the twee-pop of Belle and Sebastian.

For all this contemporary panache, the songs simply shine in their direct honesty. Unlike Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch, Blackman is comfortable talking about his own personal experiences. One of the finest tracks, ‘Dark & Quiet Place’ combines the minutiae and the general in recounting a sexual encounter from “fumbling with the buckle at my waist” to “nothing needed to be said/we were in a dark and quiet place”. A duet with Jens Lekman, a singer with a similar tone, works when seemingly it shouldn’t. The wintry atmosphere of the song is all-pervasive and The Dirty Three’s Mick Turner’s ‘steamy guitar’ (as listed in the liner notes) is utterly masterful.

Arrangements such as on ‘Dark & Quiet Place’ are perfect vehicles for Blackman’s shaky vocal, but elsewhere the backing is not so conducive to success. Aptly described in The Age listings he mostly compiles as ‘wobbly’, his lyrics are occasionally lost in the more dense or boisterous arrangements. This is especially the case with string arrangements, as on ‘World of Bees’ and ‘Black Eyes’ where they almost clash with his voice. On ‘Stay On The Beat’, the album’s most jaunty song, Blackman double-tracks his mid-range vocal, a trick often employed to give power to even the strongest vocalists. Here though, on such an organic sounding recording, it doesn’t come across too naturally.

This aspect also threatens the crucial chorus of ‘Gayle’, but in view of the song’s overwhelming strength it can barely dent the album’s best moment and what stands as an almost perfect song. With a taut, fine narrative tracing a relationship’s forgotten intimacy, which again uses the successful combination of the implied and the direct, set to a soul-funk groove, ‘Gayle’ propels the album. Its perfection is quite unexpected: a middle section horn solo and tempo change moves into an outro before the main theme is reintroduced, this time with a raucous guitar solo that sends the song into transcendence over the already devastating rhythm section.

With moments as crafted as this, it is an achievement in itself that the great strength of Adult Baby is just how real it sounds. Another result of Blackman’s place in the Melbourne indie community is his muso contacts, and Adult Baby utilises this nicely. Evelyn Morris’ (aka Pikelet) accordion on ‘Older’ adds a strangely ethereal touch, while Julian Patterson’s idiosyncratic drums and Geoff O’Connor’s guitar on ‘Mortified’ could be a collaboration between Mum Smokes and The Crayon Fields – headed by their sometime champion Blackman. These contributions suit the overall theme of the album, which is as much about music and growing older as a musician as it is about love. From ‘Carlton North’ we can do the math and trace Blackman’s career arc, but for now at least let’s hope Blackman finds solace in the release of this very fine record.