Halfway - An Outpost of Promise

  by Robert Fisher

published: 3 / 11 / 2010

Label: Plus One Records
Format: CD

intro

Polished, but impassionate third album from Brisbane-based guitar/country band, Halfway

I am probably not the right person to write this review. It isn’t really the sort of personal expression, warts and all, like I like. All the edges are just a bit too well sanded away. So that said, I will try to describe it in a way that the people who will like this, and there are many who will, will be inclined to give it a go. Do you like jangling guitar rock from the late eighties and early nineties? A lap steel thrown in at just the right plaintive moment, just a little country but not too much, a harmonica here or there, a horn section to support the hook… and oh, the hooks! Every track has at least one and it rarely takes much longer than 20 seconds to get to it. This record is a very assured recording. Very polished. Very professional. Very studied. Is it good? Yes. Is it inspired and new and can you feel a songwriter’s vision behind it? No. But sometimes that doesn’t matter. If they find the right hook, find the right label that can afford to make that hook omnipresent and keep pushing down this long and well travelled road, it probably won’t matter and the right people might tell you this band is the next big hope. It is well played, well executed, well arranged and delivered with authority. All very nice. All very tidy and neatly wrapped up in a package that will sit perfectly on you’re well engineered black/brown Ikea bookshelf right next to the Goo Goo Dolls.

Track Listing:-