Music: Sombre undertones and acerbic social commentary from two local acts

Dark sounds: Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders. Photo / supplied

Happiness is Near

by Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders

Happiness is Near by Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders. (Image / Supplied)

Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders’ 2019 collaboration, Word Gets Around, brought together seemingly disparate talents: Davidson’s noir persona and Saunders, the approachable fellow of the popular Warratahs. Like Robert Mitchum from The Night of the Hunter hooking up with gentleman Jimmy Stewart.

But the predominantly up-tempo album found them pulling out garage-band stomp-meets-Chess blues (the title track), sinister rockabilly (All Fall Down) alongside more expected material such as country rock (Stolen River), howlin’ blues (Special Rider Blues) and Saunders’ metaphorical ballad Long Way Home.

This time around, Davidson’s ability to freight simple sentiments with veiled menace is evident on the opening title track, where you don’t buy for a minute that happiness is over the horizon. Something’s coming but it sure doesn’t sound like the joyful Rapture.

There’s the brooding, stalking Yeah Yeah Yeah (“the man’s gone crazy in the big white house”), the gravitas of Man of Few Words, which would have suited Johnny Cash (“it’s all been said before”), and the uncomfortable Mean Streak (“evil in our veins … we’re never gonna change”), which addresses the latent darkness of the human psyche. Here, too, is Evil Eye, the haunted atmosphere of These Are The Days and the jaunty Little Dollar, where Saunders skewers the seduction of money and those who reel in the innocents, greedy and gullible. It would have been as relevant in the avaricious 1980s as it is today. Davidson and Saunders tap into folk, blues and country traditions but Happiness is Near is about our contemporary world, existential unease and, in its minimalist sound and fitting production, whispers you should consider the cover – where a shadow spirit looms over the duo.

A dark but extraordinary ride.

The Hollow Husk of Feeling

by Best Bets

The Hollow Husk of Feeling by Best Bets. (Image / Supplied)

Something more upbeat? Best Bets out of Ōtautahi Christchurch serve up incendiary guitar power pop with something to say.

The coiled anger and flamethrower opener, Heaven, on this second album recalls “a childish mind thinking this was paradise” and an awakening that “some prosper sewing fruitless seeds in far off foreign soil, the first to turn their back on their own backyard. Foster homes raise spoiled children who forgot how to stay loyal when the promised land raised its hand”.

Sylvania Waters takes a scalpel to those cynically and judgmentally watching reality television (“it’s a mock impersonation of life”) and the thrilling Hairshirt targets smug complacency and gestural politics which will be worthless when the reckoning arrives.

The punky Pensacola is acutely aware of “when a job was a placeholder for dreams of being a rock’n’roller”. But now there’s “the rattle of the stroller’s wheels and we know we’re getting older. Still, we’re not quite as old as we feel.”

Best Bets share an ideology of affirmative action, social awareness and acerbic observations, sometimes bumping into nihilism (“Let’s all place our bets on who’s the first to light the fuse”) and pessimism, “Everywhere you go is disaster, you feel your heart getting harder.”

This is smart power-pop agit rock pogoing right to the precipice.

Both albums are available digitally, Davidson/Saunders is also on CD and vinyl. Best Bets is on vinyl.