photo by Jaymz
A decade is a long time to be without something but well worth the wait when it comes to the new album from post punks Audra. It is ten years since the Arizona hailing band released third album Everything Changes and it is fair to say a great many have been eagerly and patiently awaiting its successor and just as simple to assume they are going to greedily bask in the dark beauty of Dear Tired Friends.
Formed in 1991 and primarily brothers Bart and Bret Helm, Audra enfold the inspirations of post punk and its numerous shapers alongside the eclectic imagination found in the likes of the Velvet Underground, Jane’s Addiction, Joy Division, David Bowie, James, and Tom Waits within their sound. As Dear Tired Friends proves it emerges a riveting often haunting embrace of intimate shadows and bewitching melancholy framed in post punk starkness and gothic rock romanticism.
An album which “deals heavily with loss and letting go” and described as “a testimony of the effect the last decade had on each band member”, Dear Tired Friends opens up with the song Tired Friends and took barely a handful of seconds to seize attention with the sizzle of Bart’s guitar across the bold but controlled rhythms of the band’s drummer, Jason DeWolfe Barton. From there pure addiction grew as the track unveiled its post punk prowess around Bret’s potent tones, the imagination only further ensnared as a calmer passage of reflection bares the heart of the track. It is a compelling and irresistible start to the album and quickly followed and matched by the outstanding Wish No Harm.
This is a song which began back in the early nineties and reappeared on a cassette they found when the band was assembling demos for what originally was to be a 4-track EP. Completed last year, Bret adding lyrics and melody to the original demo, Wish No Harm became the lead single for Dear Tired Friends and there could be no finer invitation to the album. The opening bassline was immediate manna to the ears, its lure unapologetic flirtation echoing the core essence of eighties post punk and only enhanced by the swiftly following enticement of vocals and guitar. There is something of Bauhaus meets The Cure to the song with a just as flavoursome tease of bands such as Leitmotiv and Gene Loves Jezebel but nevertheless stands unique to Audra and their dark imagination.
Another Fallen Petal is next up, the song a slowly unfurling piece of emotive solemnity and melodic intimacy within the mournful yet radiant embrace of keys. With the pure captivation bred leaving a lingering presence in thoughts, the song simply beguiled as too its successor, Drinking Yourself To Sleep. Fuelled by an instinctive catchiness bred in all tracks however their darkness and character, the equally enthralling song bears a glam rock lining to its harmonic stroll with psych rock currents in its breath.
Sunglass provides another romance of ears, keys and vocals almost crawling over the senses with the subsequent blaze of guitar sparking a Bowie-esque hue to the soulful and atmospheric piece of dark rapture while Planet Of Me steps forward with a knowing swagger to its rousing virulence. Featuring Mike VanPortfleet of Lycia as guest on lead guitar, the track is a weave of contrasts and stirring imagination; it as striking in its calm as it is in its lively eddies of contagious enterprise.
Across the fertile almost invasive liveliness of Sliding Under Cars and its Numan-esque poppiness, through The Sound/The The styled bold rapture that is Fireflies, and over the doleful but enslaving fascination of 1987 we can only say that Dear Tired Friends engrained itself deeper under the skin and into the passions before Falling brought it all to a close with its dark wave nurtured seduction. Volatility lies in the heart of the song, never fully erupting but teasing fiery emissions to the surface as it adds to the inherent beauty and splendour which lines its shadowy magnificence.
We all may have lingered ten years for a new adventure with Audra but we can tell you that every long second was worth the wait and more.
Dear Tired Friends is out now digitally and on CD and vinyl; available @ https://audra.bandcamp.com/album/dear-tired-friends
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Pete RingMaster 28/11/2019
Copyright RingMasterReview: MyFreeCopyright
The outstanding start to the album is in many ways just an appetiser to things to come, each song setting out its own individual web of craft, magnetism, and dark endeavour as epitomised by next up Still Draw Breath, a slab of primal yet deviously designed rock ‘n’ roll with a blues lining to its rise through dank cold earth. The bass of XerXes Quinn is again a predatory lure easy to succumb to as equally the biting incitement of drummer Bobby Blades; the body secured in their trap as guitar and vocals take care of the imagination with their individual tales. With a Misfits-esque draw to its holler, the track just steals self-control like a puppeteer, bones jerking to his incitement as vocal chords eagerly joined with Scott in the track’s voracious carousing.
Next up, Smooth instantly twists and turns around the senses, its post punk/alternative rock antics as invasive as they are seductive. Like the spawn of a union between The Three Johns, The Droppers Neck, and Mclusky, the song swings along drawing the listener deeper into its feral majesty before The Feeding Frenzy envelops ears with its noir clad atmospheric drama. Sonic smog devours as vocals provoke, the underlying volatility brewing a ravenous toxic drone as flirtatious as it is debilitating.
The sensational start is followed by the more straight forward rock ‘n’ roll of Don’t Throw It Away. A cleaner tone to the vocals is matched by a lighter spring in the step and voice of the psychedelia lined sounds around them. A sixties/seventies mixed scent potently adds to the inviting lure of the song and though it cannot live up to its brilliant predecessor, it has ears and body rocking before they are faced with the tantalising seduction of Someone Like You. It’s surf rock spiced melodies and ambience is a swift bewitchment, as too the rolling rhythmic bait of Thatcher; all caressing and coaxing the senses as Vernon’s sandy tones paint an evocative picture in word and tone. It is a hex of a song, a spellbinding incitement of appetite and imagination to bind listener and release closer together.
It is a great start quickly eclipsed by the even more addictive Empire. Released as a greedily devoured single towards the end of last year, it immediately runs its tempting fingers across the senses with the moody bait of McCrudden bass and the mouth-watering hooks of Browning, all within an equally captivating electronic climate. Punkish with an alluring irritability to its twists and a scent of aggravation to Bury’s expressive vocals, Empire beguiles body and thoughts, inciting thick involvement from each before making way for the spiky electro punk defiance of Time to Fight Back. With the additional agitated tenacity to spark any dance-floor, the song has the body bouncing as emotions raise a middle-finger to surrounding ills, a touch of Sigue Sigue Sputnik meets Pop Will Eat Itself doing its successful persuasion no harm.
