A call went out from central casting for a singer-songwriter. A particular sort. The call out read as thus: Wanted, man in black type figure, roots in the Deep South, profound experience with drugs and heartbreak, think Flannery O’Connor protagonist who time warps into a Lou Reed fan.
The first thing I had to get over about John Murry was how fucking much he sounds like his friend Chuck Prophet. I think they must share a larynx.
The second thing I had to get over about John Murry was how close in sensibility he is to Nick Cave. The American South and Australia have a lot in common. Most of it ugly, but damned if it doesn’t make for great lore.
Okay, I’m over it, whatever it is. A Short History of Decay is a collection that insinuates itself. Some records, maybe most, are performances. For the sake of an archetype let’s consider Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, you know, the 1967 Beatles release. It’s easy to picture yourself (on a boat on a river?) in an auditorium, velvet seats, a murmur in the hall, the curtain goes up and the band breaks into the title song. The whole presentation is a performance, a projection, drawing to a dramatic close with “A Day in the Life.”
With Short History imagine this. You’re passing through Brinkley, Arkansas, pop. 3,811, birthplace of Al Bell and Louis Jordan. A group of musicians is playing in an unkempt front yard. The performance is spontaneous, in and out of focus, but seductive. Your passing through becomes a pit stop, then a commitment of time. You get fucking sucked in. This is how John Murry, like the Southern atmospheres he comes from, works. He’s a son of Tupelo. Of course in 2017 young people know Tupelo as the home of Rae Sremmurd; they could give two fucks about Elvis Presley. And Murry owes little to Elvis, less than many of his inspirations, like Cave. But he’s every bit as much a product of his environment, no matter that he worked in the Bay Area for a number of years or that he now lives in Kilkenny, Ireland.
This music you’ve committed to doesn’t suddenly become more of a performance just because you turned your head. Like the Felice Brothers (New Yorkers by birth, but Acadian too), Murry and his crew drop sounds like expressionist painters do paint. Drummer Pat Timmins is as much about behind the beat accents and cymbals crashing in subtle waves as something as mundane as keeping the beat. Forward motion is mostly dependent on bassist Josh Finlayson, whose punchy lines help lend harmonic color as well as keep the time.
Murry is a sly, facile guitarist, laying down singer-songwriter acoustic beds one minute, splashing blasts of distortion the next, and playing surf guitar solos from hell the next. The keyboard parts vary from deep soul Percy Sledge-testimony-Hammond sounding sustains to vibe-like bits and pieces of found object riffage (I’d swear the solo on “Wrong Man” is played on a fucking Magnus chord organ).
Murry’s songs are not about redemption. It’s not even really in the picture. In fact, his characters are not likely to ever be redeemed, except by a brute will to survive. They are matter of fact about things that tidier minds would submit to guilt. But betrayal, failed expectations, and resignation are home base for the participants in Short History.
“All I do is fix what I broke the day before,” Murry laments in “Under a Darker Moon,” his slabs of glam-rock chords (I swear that’s Sammy’s “Neptune Avenue”) riding over a rhythm section unhurried by his insistence. The “Wrong Man” (‘to ride Shotgun on your Murder Mile’) is a slice of Pettyesque country-rock, making a dubious case for the artist’s taste in company. When Murry rocks he rocks like Tom Waits - slinky, sinewy, but hedging the bet of a locked in rhythm section. As Murry demurs from providing accomplice to murder, he also expresses reluctance to play redeemer (“you will not nail me down to any plank of wood”) on the lumbering rocker “Defacing Sunday Bulletins.” “When God Walks In” sounds like Lou Reed’s The Blue Mask strung with kudzu; “those who seek sanctuary better learn how to hide” Murry opines, a pure product of the New Weird America (not so different from Greil Marcus’s Old Weird America).
Sometimes Murry’s enervation is too much, as in “Come Five and Twenty,” all sloppy fret noise and mumbled harmonies. Most of the harmonies, not all of them mumbling, are contributed by Cait O’Riordan, she of Pogues fame, once Mrs. Elvis Costello. And occasionally Murry’s grim lyrics are more retread than revelation - “from the gutter, I saw stars” is a little facile, but the song from whence it comes, “Countess Iola’s Blues, is a delightfully grim gem, Murry as carney barking “hold your applause, take out your credit cards” as O’Riordan chirps “we’re all in this together” over - and - over, a less than reassuring Greek chorus of dark unity.
A Short History of Decay is not history at all. Reflection perhaps, but nothing as systematic as history. Murry’s world is one of not just reflection, but recrimination and regret. If you’re looking for ‘R’ words you’d be hard pressed to find redemption. But there’s a rueful, loser’s humor here that never surrenders. Produced by the Cowboy Junkies' Michael Timmins in a five day session, Short History is a product of beautifully matched musicians and a sort of loose alchemy. Not unlike Jim Dickinson, Timmins sets up the chess board and then lets the player’s use their wits. It’s hard to imagine these well-constructed songs being served by more conventional production. Sure, these themes could work as a Jackson Browne from Hell session (or more generously a Warren Zevon date), but this is a lot more wicked fun.
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