Hot on the heels of the release of their brilliant debut self titled album (reviewed by me here), the super duo Mess Esque have unveiled a video for the track ‘Wake Up To Yesterday’.
The opening track for the album, ‘Wake Up To Yesterday’ has soft reflective and yearning vocals over a gently rumbling and roaming guitar – part spoken poetry with heavenly harmonies. A Hammond Organ floats across the scenery – for indeed this is widescreen cinematic music that is hypnotic and expansive – breaking into back-of-the-neck hair raising melodies as Franzmann softly sings where you going to go? This is heartbreaking and beautiful.
The video – produced by the duo and shot by Caitlin Franzmann – is essentially dreamy, fuzzy monochrome shots of Mess Esque member Helen Franzmann (from Brisbane band McKisko) floating through urban streets with wispy, fey abandon amongst imposed bubbles on the screen and a dark cloudy sky. Her singing and dancing is expressive and touched by an endearing abandon:
Mess Esque the duo is Melbourne’s Mick Turner from Dirty Three and Brisbane’s Helen Franzmann from McKisko.
‘Mess Esque’ the album is an ethereal, gentle delight: yearning brittle and delicate vocals that glide over subtle but barely restrained instrumentation that adds a gold filigree to a barbed wire brush. It has the raw and visceral edge of Velvet Underground mixed with a dream pop blur – a late night excess that has resolved into a blurred fugue. What a magical collaboration.
The album is out now through Drag City Records (in the northern hemisphere) and Milk! Records in Australia and available through the link below and all the usual streaming sites.
