That “difficult second album”? Almost four years have passed since Brisbane’s Blues Arcadia released its breakout debut LP, Carnival of Fools, to instant and universal acclaim. Under normal circumstances, following up a record that opened at No 1 on the Australian Blues & Roots Airplay chart and attracted 4.5 and 5-star reviews might have been fraught with a degree of overthinking and self-doubt.
But the past four years have proved to be anything but “normal circumstances”. During an extended break enforced by a worldwide plague that brought the entire music and arts industries to a standstill, along with lives and careers in general, the population at large also took pause to consider its future. Most of us at one time or another wondered if there was a future.
Blues Arcadia took the time to write and record its second album, Now Or Never, the title suggesting a mission statement of sorts.
“There’s a definite sense after the last few years that life can change dramatically at any time,” says the band’s dynamic singer, frontman and nominal leader, Alan Boyle. “After the ‘Great Pause’ we’ve had to work harder than ever to get back into people’s lives, back on festival line-ups, to get airplay … all that work comes at a cost somewhere else in our lives. And although we get better at what we do every year, it’s not getting easier or cheaper. We can’t take that sort of commitment from ourselves or from the people who love us for granted, so if we’re going to put out a new album, watch out! We’re coming for you with everything we’ve got.
Boyle, who with quicksilver guitarist Chris Harvey is the co-writer of Blues Arcadia’s material, also took the time to address some thorny topical issues on Now Or Never: religion, abortion and the US gun lobby among them, in a song appropriately titled Thoughts & Prayers, which includes the chilling lyric: ‘You’re afraid of women with the right to choose / Well, you love Jesus and your gun / But when you take your baby to school do you pray / The evening news don’t say she’s never coming back home?’
“It’s starting to feel like end times in the US when you see children being shot by other children,” Boyle reflects. “It’s been particularly weird watching the last few years of the American post-truth era, and Thoughts & Prayers is all about that. We’re very lucky to live in Australia and be insulated from the worst of what happens in Europe and the US, but we all have family and friends there who are living in very tough times already, and there’s a sense that’s coming for the rest of us.”
Lest anyone begin to think that Now Or Never is an unremitting catalogue of doom, be assured that the album for the most part is about what’s made the band an irresistible attraction both live and on record. Sexual politics, as always, loom large in songs such as Get Yourself Together and She’s A Lady, which respectively reference female duality and gender dysphoria (‘What are you supposed to do / When you just don’t belong … / When your body’s not your own?’). Dollar Bill, released as a single back in August, anticipated the economy’s subsequent inflation panic, while Broadway Chapel calls out ‘folks getting down on their knees / looking for salvation’.
There’s even a song that uncannily foreshadowed the recent data dumps that left millions of Australians nervous about identity theft and enraged about online insecurity.
“Postmodern Times is about how we’re all dancing to the algorithm, having exchanged our data for digital convenience,” Boyle says. “It’s fantastic having all the content in the world via streaming services, but why do artists and filmmakers still not get properly paid? What happens when art is reduced to a commodity, and then given away for free? Do people expect to have the same access to art as they do with information? Why do we give our information to companies who sell it on to third parties who analyse our spending habits or monitor our behaviour, just so we can get 20 percent off our next online purchase? And then there’s the wonderful dynamic of people being awful to each other on social media … ”
As for the music on Now Or Never, the band has augmented its signature “dirty soul” sound with fresh forays into funk and jazz, while never straying too far from its grounding in the blues. Keys player Paula Girvan brings the jazz, while the longstanding Blues Arcadia rhythm section (bassist Jeremy Klysz and drummer Casper Hall) brings the funk. Guitarist Chris Harvey fuses the fluency of Stevie Ray Vaughan with the more traditional blues stylings of the “Three Kings” (Albert, Freddie and B.B.), yet his playing still manages to sound thrillingly contemporary.
Boyle sings it like he lives it, wrenching every last drop of sweat, passion and emotion from lyrics that speak to direct experience. And for at least two songs on Now Or Never (Feet Don’t Fail Me Now and More Than Less), that experience was shared by all.
“Both those songs were written at the height of Covid,” Boyle says. “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now is about what happens when governments make up the rules as they go along and you have to place your trust in institutions you’d normally be distrustful of. Some folks reacted really badly to that situation.
“More Than Less was written when Melbourne was still in lockdown and in Brisbane we were just getting used to the idea of again being allowed out to places that didn’t involve purchasing only toilet paper and beer. I was missing my family in Ireland terribly. Harv’s mum lives in France and Casper’s parents in Denmark, and we were all genuinely terrified we might not ever see our parents again.
“There was also this creeping fear that we’d lost not only our momentum as musicians but our purpose too. We write songs to be sung in a crowd, to be danced to, and loved to and fought to. No amount of online gigs or social media engagement can make up for that connection with an audience in a room. It got very fucking dark for a while there, and we weren’t really able to deal with it for quite some time.
“And yes, it feels like the arts and music industry completely fell over from lack of government support, and is yet to fully recover. It may never be the same again. Live shows are harder than ever to pull off and a lot of festivals are struggling to sell enough tickets to even cover their overheads because folks got used to staying in on the weekend.
“Nonetheless, we’ve made the best album we’ve ever made and we’re putting on our biggest ever tour to bring it around the country – while it may be a financial risk we won’t recover from, we’re going to have a damn good time doing it.”
Now Or Never, recorded and mixed by Jeff Lovejoy (Powderfinger, Resin Dogs, Pangaea, Tex Perkins) at Blackbox Studios, Moorooka, QLD
Additional recording by Casper Hall at Sound Out Studios (www.soundoutstudios.com.au), Morningside, QLD
Produced by Blues Arcadia and Jeff Lovejoy
