Apart from being a prolific artist in his own right, Bridie has long championed indigenous music from our region through the Wantok Foundation and record label. It is good to see him now in his own solo career, circumventing the tyranny of the Record Company A&R people by using crowd-funding to help finance the creation and recording of "Wake".
Instead of the album that the record company thinks he should create, here we have the one that he's been threatening to make for years, the one that's totally from his heart. It is a thing of beauty, even down to the artful sleeve and liner notes. In promotional interviews, he has explained that he chose the title for its many meanings.
We can be awakened, we can have a wake when someone dies and we can be in the wake of someone or something. Bridie's previous three solo Cd's, as well as a bunch of "Not Drowning Waving", "My Friend The Chocolate Cake" and Soundtrack albums have always featured quirky wordplay, and subject matters that make you think about issues. This new release is in the same vein. Intriguing titles such as "Dr Seuss is painting in the sky", "The shortest day of the year" and "Stoned in Kabul" draw the listener in, and Bridie gets to wax lyrical about such varied matters as wars on foreign soil, lovers growing old together, dementia and our nation's shameful treatment of refugees.
The video for "Delegate" is challenging stuff, with a Department of Immigration public servant becoming so distressed at having to deny refugee status to so many that he sets fire to himself in the office to the horror of surrounding work colleagues. For this CD and tour, Bridie has teamed up with his fellow "Not Drowning, Waving" band member John Phillips and it is Phillips' abrasive guitar work that gives the more angry songs their emphatic edge. On several of the songs it appears that Bridie has completely relaxed and discovered new registers to his voice, a Nick Cave-like depth to his voice that lends itself to much more varied tones and textures than we have heard in the past. Apart from a host of indie stars helping out, there is also a sign of things to come with young Stella Bridie providing sparkling backing vocals that complement her Dad's so perfectly on four of the songs.
Not least of these is the CD's closer, and probably my favourite track just for the impish sense of fun that imbues the recording - made in a log cabin out in the Victorian bush, it features the banjo picking of one Anthony Morgan and is a haunting reinvention of the old Hank Williams classic "I'm so lonesome I could cry". Sure, David Bridie can still pen a tune that you find yourself singing several times a day. But it is the sign of a confident and mature artist that he can create such nuanced colourful soundscapes by what is left out. It is the silences and spaces that mark this album's greatness. I get the feeling that in years to come this will be regarded as an Australian classic.
