Having originally begun to make a name for himself in photography, it was only in 2004 when a Spanish holiday and a chance decision to buy a guitar from a busker set the wheels in GEORGE BYNE’S mind in motion that he ought to take his long-running flirtation with music further than he’d originally intended.
So it’s hard to believe that only just over two years later Byrne has delivered his emotionally-weighted debut album to the ever-vigilant Laughing Outlaw label. There again, this suburban Sydney-ite had been beavering away and stockpiling songs for some time previously and knocking around with the likes of other emerging contemporary talents like Alex Lloyd, Josh Pyke and Holly Throsby (who makes an appearance on the tingling ‘We’ll Come Around’ here), so it’s probably also true that Byrne was probably only postponing the inevitable when he tried to eschew music for the lure of the lens.
Whatever, it’s good news for the rest of us that George came to his senses when he did because his debut album ‘Foreign Water’ – helped to sympathetic fruition by producer/ Church drummer Tim Powles – is something of a low-key gem. His songs are sparse, predominantly acoustic and folk-rock in design, with cracks for the light and shade (like Michael Hubbard’s gloriously ghostly pedal steel) to seep through as and when required.
The album opens with its’ stately title track: a gentle, considered, romantic and world-weary affair which nicely sets the tone for much of what follows. There are some subtle, but essential flecks of colour (not least Hubbard’s sighing steel and Emily Palethorpe’s lowing cello), while Byrne’s dreamy, but slightly parched voice can’t fail to recall top-drawer troubadours such as Ryan Adams and the late (and much-missed) David McComb. It’s unhurried and excellent in an unassuming manner that serves it very well indeed.
Actually, little of ‘Foreign Water’ is tempted to raise itself to more than a canter and for the most part that’s ideal. Yes, there are a few determined medium pacers like the dusty and achingly likeable ‘Goldmine’, the swoony, but brittle ‘Everybody Hides’ and ‘Paralysed’, which adopts a low-watt strut for its’ verses (before sliding into gorgeous yearning choruses), but – funnily enough – the one time Byrne steels himself and dives headlong into a rocker of sorts (‘Tongue Tied’ with its’ skittery, Buzzcocks-y guitars) he sounds undernourished and rather less than convincing, so perhaps he should avoid these sort of diversions in future. We’ll see.
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Nonetheless, such minor blemishes fail to spoil what is essentially a lovely, slow-burning debut and it’s never better than when Byrne gets seriously stark and intimate. If you want proof, make directly for tracks like ‘Already There’ with its’ lovely, double-tracked vocals and Neil Young-style harmonica and the Holly Throsby duet ‘We’ll Come Around’: a scarred, but re-assuring acoustic near-ballad featuring the wonderful lines “So put your hands inside of mine/ ‘Cause I’ll take your word over mine/ jut like the moon we’ll come around.” Lovely.
There’s plenty more in contention, though this writer’s personal pick of the crop is probably the tremendous ‘On My Mind’. With its’ well-meshed guitars and sweet, New York-related reveries, it’s the kind of unmissable shimmer that my favourite under-rated troubadour Chris Mills has been making his own these past few years, even though all too few of us have been noticing. Let’s hope George Byrne can penetrate and hold on to that all-important cult fan base stage rather more effectively, because the calming straits of ‘Foreign Water’ deserve to be navigated by larger numbers of keen explorers in time yet to come.
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