Nearly Oratorio – Tin

Feb
17
posted by tommy

Look. I don’t pull rank often but it’s time you paid a modicum of respect to one of the Godfathers of Australian Music. No you fool, I’m talking about me, I’m the Godfather. I’m perpetually smoking cigars and I leave horseheads everywhere, it’s crazy. People ask me, “Tommy, where do you get all these horseheads? That’s an awful lot of horseheads, relatively speaking. Most of my friends have access to two, maybe three horseheads but you seemingly have an endless supply of them [horseheads]. Got any tips for a young gun just looking to make it in the horsehead game?” Well, I won’t be giving away any trade secrets right now but just keep working hard and you’ll find a way to break through. But back on track, you need to pay some respect because I am a big dog in one very specific field of musical expertise and that’s the world of I’lls and even more specifically, the world of Simon Lam.

Back in the early years of Australian music, at some time between the Aztec and the Ottoman empires, there begun a band called I’lls and this band released their first body of work, the Thread EP. Back then they were even called I’lls’ which is such a silly and beautiful grammatical name that I almost wish it they’d kept it thus. I wrote about it and I was probably the second blog to write about it on this green earth after All I Do Is Listen (who during its too-short lifetime managed to get the drop on EVERYTHING good. R.I.P). Between that I’lls EP and the one that was to come next, there was a solo EP from Simon Lam (commonly referred to as both the Ringo and the Yoko Ono of the group, for varying reasons) and it was a very, very special record. I was the first blog to write about that one, if you don’t count All I Do Is Listen and an unnameable, fairly tragic blog that also, against all the odds, wrote some words about the record before I could. So in terms of the scale of this human and the outfit in which he participated, I basically have a masters degree and sheriff’s badge and also a personally engraved weapon. I am a wall street trader in the business of I’lls records, a university lecturer in people called Simon Lam.

So when I say that this track rules, you’ll accept that and pass it off to your friends as your own opinion and that’s just fine. It’s the first single from Simon (under the name Nearly Oratorio) since the brilliant Showers EP. Those lightly clanging bell sounds send me back to a track unsurprisingly called ‘Bells’ by a very special band named Anathallo. Simon’s vocal on this are fragile as a reed and exist in a space that’s staggeringly pretty but also doesn’t feel quite right. It’s a little uncomfortable, as if the slightest shift in the wind could pull all the frequencies from the air and leave you back in silence. It’s the title track of the ‘Tin’ EP due out April 11 through Solitaire, a label made up of a few people who can probably say they have a deeper history with I’lls than myself because, you know… they were in I’lls or whatever.

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