Golden Rough - Provenance

  by Anthony Dhanendran

published: 15 / 11 / 2002

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Golden Rough’s third album sees them moving away from the country-rock twang of their first two albums, replacing it with layered keyboards, vocals, strings and horns. Mind you, I wouldn’t know this if it wasn’t for the press release, as Golden Rough aren’t exactly household names even in the most Indie of British households. Which is a shame, as there’s plenty here to write home about. The Sydney four-piece have been together since 1995, although this is their first offering after longtime guitarist Jason Walker left last year. It’s described as literate, carefully crafted pop and it would be hard not to concur. The lazy comparison would be with Antipodean neighbours Crowded House and, while that might seem trite, it’s not far off the mark. The songs here are very well crafted – three albums and seven years have given lyricist and singer David Orwell plenty of practice and it shows. He sings of everyday life, from musings on life through a window (catchy opener ‘People in the Street’) to talk of bouncers, buses, steel and glass skyscrapers and even a trip to Antarctica (on ‘Antarctica’, unsurprisingly). The laid-back instrumentation perfectly complements the everyman songwriting, although it can get a bit too laid-back for its own good, as on ‘Captains of Industry’, when the absence of a hook means that it’s easy to be distracted away. Then again, maybe that’s part of the point. This could certainly replace Coldplay as the popular choice for music to cook and clean to, being something that rewards the careful listener but serves as perfectly good background at the same time. ‘99%’ is an extremely good acoustic pop song in the vein of the aforementioned Coldplay, at the same time evoking memories of David Gedge’s Cinerama. It’s already been getting airplay in Australia, and with any luck will kick start things over here for the band. It doesn’t contain anything spectacularly avant-garde, and it won’t set the world on fire, but it is a particularly accomplished light album, and well worth a listen.

Track Listing:-

1 People in the Street
2 Provenance
3 Seen It All Before
4 Trust
5 Lucinda
6 Captains of Industry
7 Ninety-Nine Percent
8 Antarctica
9 Sleepwalker
10 Everything Falls Apart
11 Summer Feeling
12 Someone Else's Home

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