David Kilgour, The Far Now

When Constable Clean and his smiling heavies swept through Melbourne last month me and the entire cast of Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures, started getting down! The hot chicks, hell, they probably dug that shit the most!

I was detained at the box office, but I could hear what was going on from around the curtain and it was beginning to make my toes tremble. By the time I got in I told everyone “hi!” and began slowly devouring a vast quantity of snags Russell was barbequing. Now if I had showed the same modest appetite around the cooker as Mr. Kilgour had brought to the Corner that eve I probably wouldn’t have been sitting down for so long afterwards. Nevertheless, a night of indescribable pleasure was had, but geez Russell, next time go a bit easy on the mosquito coils, it’s a non-smoking venue.

Now Mr. K. he played virtually every song off his latest entitled 'Far Now', a collectionof pleasant psych rock with small stakes set to classy grooves that together add up to a handsome addition to the K canon and as breezy as a slight autumn wind up your rear entry. Opener Sun of God, this weird meditative guitar thing using like 39 guitars or so, including, but not limited to, serene burbles of feedback, stoned drones, a Brian Jones-slide thing that’s a treat and a half among heaps more. BBC World is windows-down action in the order of Kilgour’s charming ’92 effort Here Come The Cars. “I got drunk on the Yenesei,” sings Kilgour on Yenesei before a well-muted Luna-esque jam closes proceedings, guitars howling faintly like a wolfpack across the canyon looking at some dag-nasty animal carcass. But prettier. Like say our own Popolice. Closer ’Out of the Moment’ so rustic and woodsy is like a visit to a logging camp without actually going there and getting hit in the head by an axe handle by your Dad.

The music suffers when Tane Takoma ain’t working the beat like a crime scene reporter, his fedora tilted and his slacks pressed like my man Joe Mitchell. The Dylan influenced stuff kind of stinks too, as Lorraine mentioned that night and that I’m onjly picking up on now, plus the few delicate pieces that don’t seem to go anywhere, they may have been tossed off on the porch or something, they came alive a bit better live and man, Russell cannot get enough of Mr. K. You know he picked up The Clean Anthology and when he’s out in the dust winding up the dingoes, he kicks it to Tally-Ho!