Augie March Watch Me Disappear (SS) by: Steve Scully Thu:02-Oct-08 Label: Sony BMG Year: 2008 WB rating 64 out of 100

Often labeled high-brow, inaccessible ‘literary rock’ and other such nonsense, Augie March’s have been left weighty with critical praise but light-on for broader audience appeal. Fans of the band will tell you that Sunset Studies and Strange Bird are among the best rock albums ever produced. Die-hard fans will tell you that recordings pre-dating the albums, the EPs Thanks for the Memes and Waltz, are equally deserving of unflinching praise. Moo, You Bloody Choir, the band’s third LP, was a step toward broader success. Chart-topping, award-winning and, more importantly perhaps, highly accessible, Moo saw Augie step into the limelight; the brighter lights of TV-show lamps and stadium strobes now tanning the pasty skin of these country boys. And now, in the fading glow of their most successful – but by no means best – record, they appear again.

It all comes down to this: on Sunset Studies and Strange Bird, Augie seemed dead-set on creating Albums. An Album, an elusive, difficultly defined concept, is far greater than the songs contained within. Rather, it sits as its own complete entity, apart from the individual personalities of such separate songs. Sunset Studies may have offered us such gems as ‘Asleep In Perfection’, ‘Here Comes the Night’ and ‘Tulip’ (to name three of the numerous classics) and Strange Bird, ‘Little Wonder, ‘Song in the Key of Chance’ and ‘Sunstroke House’, but they also created a mood, and embodied it consistently and beautifully. With the passing of each track, the juxtapositions and harmoniousness, two of the most refined and aesthetically profound Albums in Australian Rock history grew stronger and stronger, their climaxes although unwelcome, made as much sense as the climax of any great novel or film.

Moo, You Bloody Choir saw Augie step away from the high-brow for a moment. Whether because they were bored, or because of the pressure from Sony BMG (whose rapidly-increasing number of signings from the cast of mediocre Australian Idol contestants had already led to Alt-Rock and Indie casualties), the band stepped into the Single mentality. The songs on Moo were each individual characters on a barely cohesive landscape. While some made sense – ‘Cold Acre’, ‘One Crowded Hour’ and ‘Clockwork’ deserve to live alongside the band’s back-catalogue – many, such as ‘Mother Greer’, pointed towards a shift in ethos. No longer were Augie creating Albums, rather they were piecing together the most viable and likable tracks.

And now we have Watch Me Disappear. Watch Me Disappear offers flashes of ingenuity amidst what is often a mire of inconsequentiality. It has only a handful of moments recognisable as Augie March; it has stretches of songs not even up to the standard of their previous B-Sides, it is at times alarming in its simplicity and predictability. Watch Me Disappear is Augie March’s first failure.

Watch Me Disappear’s darkest and most charismatic moment is the album opener, title-track ‘Watch Me Disappear’. Subtle distortion, heavy-handed riffs and a whole lot of swirling atmospheric hum all add up to something very potent. The strangely-constructed, gothic/dream-pop feel rewards the listener for repeated listens, it is far greater than its initial impact suggests. Glenn Richards’ vocals too are oddly restrained considering the complexity of the arrangement.

For much of the remainder of the record, Augie March prefers to dwell in the realm of disposability. ‘Pennywhistle’, while offering one of the more irritating whistle parts since the flute in Nick Cave’s ‘Breathless’, is a solid, if unremarkable pop track with as much Paul Kelly as Counting Crows to its makeup. Songs such as ‘Farmer’s Son’ and ‘Mugged By the Mob’ are all based around oddly predictable progressions and despite any nice touches (the horns in ‘Pennywhistle’ and ‘Mugged by the Mob’ for example) never seem to take off.

These tracks also reveal another of the album’s flaws: Richards seems to be in lyrical auto-pilot. While ‘Mugged by the Mob’ sees him in the usual socio-phobic mindset, there’s something about the way Richards sings “See them walk the streets in packs/like so many chimpanzees/those mental amputees” that lacks the usual grace, and the cop-out that is the opening line of ‘Farmer’s Son’ is nearly laughable: “I didn’t know you/ I never knew you/ Now I’m never gonna see you again.” The bar that Richards raised so high with his lyrical output – even the lyrics on the uninspiring Moo were unconditionally brilliant – seems drastically out of reach. Kudos, however, for working the words “Aegean Sea” into ‘Pennywhistle’… keep the mob thinking.

Two other tracks – ‘City of Rescue’ and ‘The Glenorchy Bunyip’ – make painfully clear something that has forever gone unmentioned: Augie March is, for all intents and purposes, a two-paced band. Through Sunset and Strange, such an issue was irrelevant considering the strength of the tracks concerned; all tracks, fast or slow, succeeded in astounding us. On Moo, the ‘obligatory rock song’ (as Glenn himself put it jokingly), ‘Just Passing Through’, stood as a sole beacon to the band’s more up-beat styling, although it never quite hit the same chord as ‘This Train Will Be Taking No Passengers’, ‘Song in the Key of Chance’ (Strange Bird) or ‘Maroondah Reservoir’ (Sunset Studies). As you work your way through Watch, however, the ‘rocky’ numbers seem contrived, even perhaps obligatory and forced, such is their futility.

Of course, not all of Watch Me Disappear is wholly disappointing. Apart from the opening number, there are one or two other moments of what seems like typical Augie March. The quirky ‘Becoming Bryn’ is a nice foil for the predictable ‘Pennywhistle’, and recalls the idiosyncratic lushness of Sunset Studies. However it’s a breed of quirkiness that Augie have managed to do time and time again, and the lack of any true innovation only furthers the ‘autopilot’/Augie-by-numbers critique that it’s bound to attract. The gorgeous ‘Devil in Me’ has Richards’ vocals at their best over a stirring string and piano concoction.

For all this negativity, you are urged to keep faith: this is not the death knell for Augie March. While the album may represent an overall failure, it does so as a direct result of the band’s own conscious actions. While some bands meet unrest in their support-base due to things completely out of their control, Augie March have only themselves to blame for any ill-effects Watch Me Disappear may have. Everything on this record is completely contrived: all but one of the 11 tracks sit under five minutes in length, they’ve included two ‘rocky’ ones, they’ve endeavored to create more songs that fit into the ‘One Crowded Hour’ minimalist, commercially-acceptable mould. Most of the album’s flaws seem to be born out of Augie March’s efforts to continue their love affair with the general population who just didn’t ‘get’ their earlier stuff.

Glenn Richards and his mates will get the message, though… I damn well hope they do, at least; I don’t want Augie’s first complete misstep to be their last step on Earth. Glenn, if you’re out there, take a leaf out of your own book. You got so frustrated at all those mouth-breathers who hassled you to play ‘One Crowded Hour’ at your gigs – you level abuse at the “mental amputees” even on this record – so please stop trying to write music to appeal to them. Although BMG and the vile rabble that is the Australian public may not share our opinion, we love you when you’re self-indulgent, and we love you even more when you wallow in it.