Last year, Darren Cross released the visceral album, ‘Distorder’, which I described as:
…a brilliant expression of our times: discordant, unsettling and at times bleak, but delivered with a swagger and a panache. Cross puts on display his musicianship and creativity, creating something dark and elusive yet touched with a certain element of wry amusement. A panoply of sonic expression, a bitter confection of dissonance but a thoroughly enjoyable and cathartic whole.
Now Cross has released a quiet and evocative album of instrumentals, putting on show his refined and delicate abilities on guitar and ability to capture exquisite senses and feelings of the Australian countryside. It is a complete antithesis to the electronic juggernaut that was ‘Distorder’: something quite peaceful and reflective that gives one a sense of much needed openness and fresh air.
Subtitled ‘Australian escapist pieces for guitar’, the album has a shimmering and expansive quality that seems to evoke memories – enhanced by the song titles – of those long drives in the hot dry countryside with the window open and the gumtrees waving in the distance. Cross’s prowess is on full display: beautiful picking, strumming, arpeggiated sequences that mimic the endless thrum of wheels on tarmac, the swiftly passing vistas with a timeless ethereal quality.
Cross says of the album:
Covid is still messing everything up for musicians in regards to touring and playing shows but it is a great time for some to hone in on their crafts and compose music. I chose to keep on writing escapist compositions on the guitar… if I like I can go stay in $35 a night motels in Lithgow N.S.W, armed with only a guitar and some free instant coffee, look out the window at the mountains, dreary rain and snow and write music inspired by the moment and environment, tuning in to old histories and vibrations, literally escaping.
The cover is an hilarious antithesis to the album itself: a claustrophobic indoors picture reflecting the isolation and deprivation we have all faced over the last two years. The music therefore becomes a shining bright release from this dark confinement.
‘Hot-wire the Lay-low (Australian escapist pieces for guitar)’ is available below in digital and physical form:
Darren Cross is a pillar of the inner city indie scene in Australia: one of those hyperactive artists who never stands still. In the nineties he was in Gerling – a genre-defying iconic indie band that transgressed the boundaries between guitar-based indie rock and electronica. Later as part of Jess and Dep, he delved into an indie folk field and he lent his songwriting and production skills to the Jep half of the duo – Jessica (reviewed by me here) – while also putting his visionary skills into video production for a number of artists.
