THE
SOBER LIGHT OF DAY - Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side (Spooky
Records)
Into
the half light and smokey haze of a darkened and wet street emerges a gaunt
and disturbed figure. He's all crumpled lounge suit, glaring red eyes and
disheveled hair. He carries a broken gin bottle in his hand. There's a smell
of what might be cheap whiskey on his breath and 
maybe
a substance-affected sway in his step. His sweat is profuse and foul smelling.
No real way of telling what reduced him to this state, but there's no mistaking
the murderous intent as he stumbles up, waves the jagged glass in your face.
There's a chill down your spine as it stops a centimetre short of your face.
He asks: "Have you heard my album on Triple Jay?"
Welcome to the world of Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side...
Gentle Ben is aka Ben Corbett, one half of the singing brotherly frontline
of Brisbane's revved up, testosterone-a-billy Six Ft Hick. The Hick are right
in your face, a flat-out and fucked up death machine on the road to who knows
where. When Brother Ben yields to His Sensitive Side, on the other hand, the
destination board on the front of the bus clearly reads Hell. He's just taking
a different and less obvious route.
These songs are alternatively reflective ("Filling in the Ditch"),
dark and dispossessed ("Song of Drowning Man"), melodramatic ("Help
Me Make It Down the Street" and the ripper single, "The Dogs of
Valparaiso") and just overflowing with utterly black humour. Musically,
it's mid-tempo rock and roll laced with a Latin feel and swampy, spaghetti
western tinges.
It's a fair bet Spencer P. Jones might dip his stetson to their cover of his
"Execution Day".
This is a band tempered by a previous album ("The Beginning of the End")
and lots of live work. They're all great players. But let's give it up, folks,
for guitarist Dylan McCormick (also of The Polaroids) who understates his
hand in the right places and adds the essential light and shade. And of course
you have Gentle Ben who makes the most of the spaces his band delivers and
delivers a stellar vocal performance.
A Great Moment in Lyrics: "Grab a pick and shovel and meet me at dawn/Tell
that real estate agent to get off that lawn" (from "Filling in the
Ditch"). There are plenty others if you're willing to take time to dig.
The most interesting music is by bands that ignore expectations and defy pigeonholing.
That's what Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side do, switchblade in one hand
and six-string in the other. More power to them. One of the most intriguing
Aussie albums of 2005. –
The Barman
1/2