Sydney’s Jack Nolan has a new single out, ‘Gabriel’, which is an atmospheric slice of what is called American, (amusingly translated to the Australian milieu as Darlinghurst Country – inner city urban country). An evocative piece of storytelling is delivered in a multilayered parcel that jangles and sparkles with an organic feel. Nolan’s vocals and harmonies are filled with a melancholy and yearning, born from a dreamy fugue.
Nolan vivdily explains the genesis of the track:
We were on the road, from heaving LA freeways and into Death Valley, a most peculiar place, an unknown place. When your mind is elsewhere, irretrievable, like mine at the time, the valley’s a parallel universe, perdition. We were in the midst of a three-day dream. I fell upon a crossroad, landing eighty-six metres below sea level in the Californian Desert at a place, Badwater Basin, where an androgynous guardian appears, Gabriel, kind, gentle yet hard-lived and furrowed, who gave and left me with hope that all would be well.
The original version, the demo, had that magic, which I thought about releasing it as it was, having gone into the old Damien Gerrard studio in Sydney, to bang down some ideas. I played everything, guitars, shakers, lead, the vocal and I also sang the harmonies. It worked, but my belief in the song told me to give it the environment it deserved. Arriving in Nashville I briefed producer Justin Weaver, who went about recreating the demo perfectly from the ground up. I still handled the guitars, the lead vocal and all harmonies but was smart enough to hand off the rest to the boys!.’’ Listen for Jimmy Paxson on the trash can drum, swinging around the harmonies and Justin Weavers banjo, that is the optimism and the final outcome.
The result is something quite spiritual and enchanting:
Out through Foghorn Records, ‘Gabriel’ the single is available now to download or stream here
