Bird in Bush Road
Otis Mace
Its hard to believe its been
twelve years since Otis Maces last full-length studio outing,
Quick; in music as in cheese, good things take time. Bird
in Bush Road feels like a companion volume to the previous album,
a complementary selection of songs honed in live performance committed
to disc. Musically the album is similarly eclectic, blending gentle
folkish ballads with unabashed rock and roll and pyschobilly excursions.
These days Otis has a full band at his disposal, the Moon Cresta, but
for the most part the arrangements are stripped back, bringing his uniquely
expressive voice and assured guitar to the fore. He still has
an ear for memorable melodies, as in the serpentine Anita and
Serena Plus One that close the album. These pop-inclined
numbers, like the rollickingly sarcastic That Kind of Attention,
could equally well have been written for Billy Bragg. A new version
of Horrorshow is a fuzzy, throaty howl to earlier times.
There are echoes of Dunedin in the two-chord verses and asymmetric solos
of Anything Else and Serena Plus One. Lyrically there
is a self-deprecating sense of humour underlying the pieced together
moments, satirical characters and flights of fancy. Dirty Coward
Angel jumps whooping and hollering on the next train south, pausing
only to molest a saxophone. Mad as a Balloon is a manic-depressive
reverie of parental angst, while Zazz and the Monster lopes along
with a trash-talking boogie swagger. Otis Mace is up there with
the likes of Bob Brannigan (Shaft) and James Moore (the Lure of Shoes),
a well-established local artist with a distinctively original approach
to rock and roll. Bird in Bush Road is both a delight for
fans, and full of surprises for the unacquainted. If you dont
have it already, do yourself a favour and get Quick as well.
- Roland Brownlee