Lady Of The Sunshine - Smoking Gun

(Muso's Guide, March 11, 2009)

Album reviews

Fresh from the tender A Book Like This album recorded with his sister Julia, Aussie Angus Stone shows once again that there isn’t a musical style that he cannot turn his hand to.
On opener ‘Silver Revolver’ - rest assured, the predilection for firearms titles ends here - the guitar speaks volumes, while the slightly dispassionate vocal fails to ignite. Presently, a poppier side to the track makes itself known, but the self-flagellating nature of the lyrics - “All I’ve ever been to myself is my own enemy” - makes for a heavy listen.

From there to ‘Home Sweet Home’, Angus morphs casually into a sort of Jack Johnson/Jason Mraz hybrid, and all would seem to be lost - until ‘White Rose Parade’.

Bizarrely, considering the the high points of A Book Like This, Lady Of The Sunshine’s strength lies, not in the gentle guitar strumming which he made his own on the familial hit from the year, but in the sort of bluesy, rocky tracks of which ‘White Rose Parade’ is the jewel.

Rocking in gently - think Bon Jovi circa ‘Midnight In Chelsea’ as opposed to Lemmy - the bluesier side of Angus really builds up, and the whole thing quite pleasantly rollicks along, sort of like Mark Owen singing for the White Stripes.

‘Jack Nimble’ shows Angus contemplating the darker side of life, where the character catches his wife “messing with another man/He got his gun and shot them down”. The mention of the nursery rhyme character invokes Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’, and there’s some pretty heavy guitar distortion which renders the whole thing very dramatic indeed.

The slightly schizophrenic ‘King Black Magic’, brings both sides of the Stone coin together, sort of like Turin Brakes getting down with a jagged antisocial buzz saw of a tune, but even on this one track, it’s clear where Angus’ strength lies.

When Angus does it right, he damn near kicks off a rock revolution; the title track crashes in out of a feedback wilderness, with a yowling vocal that would make Jon Spencer Blues Explosion proud.
But without Julia’s intriguing vocal to lift the acoustic numbers, some of the gentler tracks like ‘Anna’ wind up being little more than gentle little hiccups, momentary diversions, without any real staying power.

Perhaps Lady Of The Sunshine is a mere dalliance for this talented singer songwriter. If we’re lucky, Angus will see the rock direction as more than that, and return to the scene of the Smoking Gun very soon.