The Cedar Lounge Revolution

On foot of last week when soubresauts mentioned Steve Kilbey, and thinking – yet again – of all things Antipodean, my mind was drawn back to Jack Frost, the joint solo project between Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens and Steve Kilbey of the Church. The two got together in 1990/1 and produced the first eponymous album. Working together on almost all the instruments it had a synth sheen put on acoustic guitars. Melodic, wistful and quite affecting it was probably purchased by no-one.

Two years later they reconvened for the harsher Snow Job, an altogether more feisty affair. This time the guitars are more often electric and more clearly put to the fore. Jack Frost Blues and Dry Dock are fabulous songs. Angela Carter treading dangerously close to whimsy. Some think that overall the sound is closer to the Church than to The Go-Betweens.

And yet Robert Christgau – a vehement critic of the Church – notes that:

It’s 1993. Grant McLennan of the much-mourned Go-Betweens meets Steve Kilbey of the barely-missed Church for a second one-off, written and recorded on the spot and then stuck in a box until they find time to finalize it, which takes years. The songs evoke romantic moods and vague experiences rather than nailing the literal-cum-ineffable; the music strives for effect rather than detail or even ambience. By McLennan’s standards, it’s hokey, mysterioso, fulla keybs. Yet its schlock disposability and glam brio generate the crass charm McLennan’s class act too often avoids. Too bad only cultists will care–and worse still that they’ll probably reject it on principle. B+

I can’t find any YouTube video from the second album but there are two for the first. Every hour god sends…is here. I presume that it was released as a single. It gives a good flavour of one strand of the album… early 1990s percussion, partially synthesised… it’s not my favourite of theirs.

Perhaps more representative is Thought that I was over you…

It’s more traditional in approach, has some fairly bitter lyrics which then subside into sadness and it is clear that the two of them are having a ball.
My God! They look young. McLennan is even fresh faced. Well… it was 16 years ago. The interplay between the two vocalists works well. There’s no egotistical mugging.

I’ve mentioned before how some years back I met McLennan briefly in a pub close to the Ambassador where the Go-Betweens had played that evening. In the course of a few words I told him how much I had enjoyed the Jack Frost project and he said a few very generous words about how much fun he’d had working on that with Steve Kilbey. Last year, when the Church played Dublin, Kilbey played Providence – from the first JF album by way of a tribute.

It’s hard not to feel listening to these albums that they provided a real insight into two very different, but sometimes quite similar, talents and in a way led to a weird merging of those talents. I’ve listened to the albums over the years and even now I find it hard to entirely be sure who is singing what. And yet, Kilbey and McLennan have utterly different singing voices… I don’t know how it works… perhaps something of that antipodean slightly flat vocalisation that one sees with bands as diverse as the Chills and the Clean. Actually, they’re not that diverse are they?

Anyhow, I’m sorry they never got together for a third album.