Gentle Ben And His Sensitive Side - The Sober Light Of Day

The Queensland band with more soul than most return with a second album that makes good on the promises made in their debut. Don your dinner jacket, and enter the seamy world of the Sensitive Side.

When Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side’s first album, The Beginning Of The End was released, it heralded the arrival something truly different on the Australian scene. Sure, people knew that the singer from the legendary SixFtHick, and understood that there’d be some level of theatrical oddness involved, but few expected the level of observational cabaret that the band would bring to the scene. Their first disc unveiled the group’s penchant for exploring the sorts of tunes usually relegated to late-night AM country radio, to lost broadcasts, and marked them as a group with bucket loads of potential.

Happily, their second release has proven that the glowing reviews weren’t bullshit: the band is back, leaner and more suave than ever. There’s growth on this disc, and it’s aided the Sensitive Side’s whip-smart tunes no end.

The last year has been hard on the band’s touring schedule. They’ve spent most of the time – save for the odd excursion into the limelight – sequestered away, working on songs for the new album. Compared to 2004 (when the band shared stages with Rocket Science, Calexico and The Handsome Family, amongst others) 2005 has been very quiet for the quartet, spending chunks of time in Melbourne’s Atlantis Studio, under the sound guidance of producer Loki Lockwood. And while it was created in time away from the stage, it’s obvious that the band’s rigorous touring schedule has impacted on the performances on The Sober Light Of Day. Tracks from their debut (such as I Don’t Think She Loves Me and I Can’t Hurt You) hinted at the sort of explosive stop-start power that the band could corral. It’s that power – the acknowledgement of the role of tension in the tunes – that’s been honed mightily since the last release. The first album sounded like a band finding its feet, while this one is a record of a band that’s rehearsed so rigorously that they’re perfectly in sync – something that’s vital if you’re in a musical concern that, in a live setting, must follow the whims of a theatrically-inclined front man. There’s a sense, much more than before, that the Sensitive Side are not only comfortable with the idea of exploring the tunes, but that they’re relishing it.

There’s a distinct sense of play through the album, of experimentation within some particularly-defined areas. This is perhaps most obvious in the album’s longest track, Summertime, a tune of a singer’s loss, which takes wordless lamentation to extended lengths. At the other extreme, songs like Punishment and lead single The Dogs of Valparaiso show that the quick-change dynamic of the band’s been refined, and that the big beat’s been embraced wholeheartedly, and embellished with flick-knives.

The Sober Light Of Day is an album that sounds, lyrically, like it’s come from England. That’s not to say that the subject matter isn’t Australian – not at all. Rather, it seems that Ben Corbett’s lyrics are of a style that echoes Tindersticks, Morrissey or Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker. The examination of life that’s written here is particularly kitchen-sink, in a warts-and-all manner that’s at once confession and parody. The focus here is on the seamy side of life, of extremity, of the nastiness that surfaces when the fun’s over and the velvet curtains have been drawn. It’s easy to laugh some of it off, but the disconcerting note that the songs strike – and there’s more than a few across this disc – linger on. It’s something that overseas bands seem to be a little more au fait with than locals, so it’s good to see a local act embracing that sense of lopsidedness.

The thing that appeals most about this album is the fact that the music is ostensibly chipper, happy music. It’s accomplished, with a certain amount of sultriness. But it’s this confection that makes the sting of the lyrical content that much more pronounced. It’s something that’s got a long history in music, and the nearest touchstone (aside from Pulp, or Morrissey, that is) is something like The Ronettes' Be My Baby. Elements of Phil Spector’s production style appear on the album – spacious sounding songs, moments where guitars ramp into walls, backing vocals that seem ripped from the past – but what appears more noticeably is the mixture of a pleading, hopeless, diminished-strength vocal linked with sugary pop music. It worked for The Ronettes, and it’s working for Gentle Ben; perhaps more effectively, as the disc’s exploration of male characters in periods of breakdown, or in the titular sober light of day, seems at once somehow more pathetic, and more intriguing. The puppy dog-eyed, over-eager offers of love are present here, as they were in the Ronettes’ day, but they’re tempered with the barely-constrained (if at all) violence of the flawed male.

It makes for a breathtaking examination of men at extremity. And as such, it puts a lot of attention on the band’s singer. Thankfully, Ben Corbett’s performative streak is broad enough to make the feelings ring true, rather than come across as some kind of overplayed cabaret role. The band behind him – guitarist Dylan McCormack, bassist Trevor Ludlow and drummer Nick Naughton – are up to the job of supporting such an endeavour. The two elements – band and singer – are obviously more enmeshed here than they were on their last outing, as the arrangements in the tunes are a lot more complex, with a South American strain making itself felt a little more forcefully than before. There’s a sharpened sense of clarity on display here, leaving the listener in no doubt that this is a formidable group, working at full strength.

The Song Of Drowning Men sets the scene for the rest of the album. Opening with insistent drums and a sort of Cramps/spy movie crossover riff, the story of social failure kicks proceedings off with a defiantly sexy hip-shake. The song also highlights the fact that the imagery in Corbett’s lyrics is much more pronounced on this release. The spin-cycle deaths of men attempting to measure up socially, stifled by music and perfume, are painted in fine detail from the outset:

There’s an ocean on the dance floor
And it’s full of drowning men
Clutching at fistfuls of torn skirts
And this song is washing over them.

It also, importantly, sets up the band as something close to a house band for tragedy. Gentle Ben is someone observing these dissolute characters, someone close to the action but not part of it. Yet, later in the disc, first person narrative comes to the fore. The line between participant and voyeur is blurred, and this sort of occlusion – carried on in lyrics which often only obliquely hint at what’s going on, such as the possible new start (or burial) implied in Filling In The Ditch – is key to what the band’s trying to do. It forces you to listen harder; to ascertain whether the buoyancy of the music or the dark velvet of the lyrics carry the true meaning of the song. It creates an internal tension that’s crucial to the band’s sound.

The First Song Of The Last Day Of The Rest Of Your Life follows, and it’s sort of like an amphetamine-fuelled version of Pulp’s Bar Italia, albeit a version containing both psychedelic offshoots and Elvis Costello-speedy panache. It is, essentially, a reminder of the Oscar Wilde truism about being in the gutter and looking at the stars – except for the fact that in this world, we’re in the gutter and looking at an evening’s worth of beer, and that that realisation is set to a beat that you can’t help but dance to.

The aforementioned Morrissey similarity comes into play with Help Me Make It Down The Street, one of the album’s most appealing songs. It could be something as simple as the fact that Morrissey does have something of a Spector-production fetish, but it seems that the guitar lines from this tune, layered over a bruiser’s warning of just what love for him will entail, could’ve come from what’s undeniably that artist’s bittersweet epic Vauxhall & I. Except here, the rough trade is real, immediate and threatening:

And if any man looks sideways
Or perchance makes a remark
It’s gonna get very dark…

Of course, all the machismo here means nothing; for while the narrator’s a thug, he can’t make it through alone:

Darling, give me hope
Take off your heels and hold me up
My split lip drips kisses inarticulate

So when I cannot speak and
Cannot find my feet
Help me make it down…

Oh, on some enchanted eve
Help me make it down the street

The guitar solo of the tune – which also reminds the listener of the Pixies’ Where Is My Mind? – adds a sort of sugary blast to what’s essential a tune about a brawling bastard. Moments where guitar and bass combine in a climbing riff, and the minor-key lead-in to the chorus work together to sucker-punch the listener into feeling for the reprobate that’s sung about. It’s confronting, because the last thing you expect to feel that Northern Soul sappiness about is someone who’s ostensibly a drunk with a hair-trigger, but it works so well that you can’t help but feel some kind of sympathy. It’s moving, stunningly so.

Carpark is another tune that takes violence as a key concern. Beginning with one of the most immediately descriptive verses I’ve heard in a while,

Cut adrift in whiskey mist
Then you sailed by, like the Mary Celeste
Slicing up the parquetry
In a drunken slow-dance
With his hand up your skirt
And your hand down his pants

the song continues an examination of a jilted lover, a fool. Sparse instruments – bass, acoustic guitar and cannily-placed organ – underscore the abandonment the speaker feels. But, true to form, the shadow of weakness overcome with violent intent makes an appearance, with a chilling prediction of how the evening’s embarrassment will end:

This is not the place
For me to stand and fight
‘Cause wallflowers wilt
Under dance floor lights

But I will show you
And I will prove to you
Who loves you more
With a true heart
And a sock full of pool balls.

Sounds in poor taste? Strangely, it’s not. It’s an examination of a character that most of us would recognise, either from keeping eyes open after a long night on the piss, or from personal experience. But it’s someone who isn’t usually given a chance to talk, someone whose viewpoint isn’t explored in rock. Not usually. That’s where Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side shine – giving voice to people who we’d rather not hear from, and proving that their stories can be poignant and affecting, even while they remain morally reprehensible.

Similarly, the S&M messages of Punishment – a song which rides on a palm-muted guitar line, before flowering into a wonderful, sparkling guitar riff, replete with angelic backing chorus – explore the mindset of a controlling person, who could as easily be God as the singer himself. Lines that speak of whipping, of entrapment and duplicity are used to explore seaminess in a non-seamy musical setting, and it’s intriguing.

Elsewhere, The Shimmering Hand looks at a narrator that’s

Firm but fairly unconcerned
With right or wrong

before moving onto the sort of nameless horrors that he’s carried out in the name of The Shimmering Hand. Is it a crime cabal, a bunch of religious zealots, or something more sinister? It’s never adequately explained, and while the Eastern tinges to the tune carry their own suggestions, it’s refreshing to hear something that lets you draw your own conclusions, rather than stating the case plainly. It signifies bravery on behalf of the band, at least, to firstly believe that the tunes are strong enough to tell their own open-ended stories, and secondly, to let them do exactly that.

The song that underscores the band’s security in their sound is Execution Day, a cover of the Beasts of Bourbon tune. In the hands of the Sensitive Side, it’s turned from a dirty, gritty rock song into something completely different. Martinis wait in the background. We’re at some kind of Caribbean resort, at a spy convention, on a tropical island. There are low-key machinations afoot, with vocals remaining smooth until the inevitable eruption of passion – which subsides as quickly as it came. It’s more threatening than the original, perhaps because of the restraint that’s on display: like a mask hiding what’s underneath, this version of the song conveys real feelings of tension, of uncertainty, and they’re communicated beautifully through McCormack’s guitar-playing.

The album ends with an off-the-cuff tune, Plaza De Armas. Written in the studio, the tale of a new life through drug trafficking provides the perfect early-morning stumbling-out tune to close the album. It brings a feeling of ambivalence with it, that’s a perfect palate-cleanser from preceding tune Summertime’s focused despair. There’s a feeling of hope, of new beginnings, but they’re entwined with the feeling that what’s just transpired has fucked things up irrevocably. It links with the downbeat ending of the band’s debut, and brings the song cycle nicely to an end, leaving uncertainty and a certain dose of regret, of faded glamour that’s hard to resist.

The artwork of this release: queasy greens and collapsed bodies – fits the tone of the album well. But the key component, I feel, is the inlay photograph: in it, a sweat-slicked Corbett stands onstage, limp, looking off into the distance, engrossed in his song and the thoughts they bring. The faraway look in the eyes turns songs into recollections, rather than creations, and lends the endeavour the feeling of honesty that’s crucial to its success.

Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side are back. They’ve returned in a form so suave, so sinuous that it’s doubtful that their equal exists in their country. There’s keen-eyed observation here that’s quite rare, and quite searching. You’re never sure if it’s a gigantic pisstake, or the most plain-speaking album you’ve ever heard, but one thing’s for sure: The Sober Light Of Day is much, much closer to the electric windmilling sweatbox that is Gentle Ben live. This is an album that crackles with energy, and demands to be heard. Or else.

Lock up your mothers, and give fulsome praise that Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side exists. After all, someone in this country’s got to take care of the dirty work. And it sure as hell ain’t gonna be any of those ‘70s revivalist groups, is it? Sometimes, only a silver-tongued, swivel-hipped bruiser and his crew of reprobates are the only men for the job. Invite them in, but watch out for the sock full of pool balls. The world awaits, Ben, so sally forth and break its heart.

This article originally appeared on FasterLouder.com.au. I am no longer associated with that website and, as copyright owner, have moved it here for permanent record.

The Proposition (John Hillcoat, director)

Perhaps this year's most anticipated Australian film, The Proposition tells a story set in the 1880s, but which resonates with the present, too.

There have been few Australian films as hotly anticipated as The Proposition. The combination of director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave (who have created film clips together, and were previously teamed on the thoroughly disturbing Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead) and a cast including Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, John Hurt and David Wenham served to create quite an appetite. The good news is that the expectations created by such a gathering of talents are surpassed with this film. It’s a truculent, smouldering piece that, while managing to have a core story that’s straight out of a western, manages to address issues which still dog Australia today.

The film’s opening scene – a moment’s pleasure torn apart in a hail of bullets – certainly hooks the viewer. It’s certainly the most dynamic, action-filled scene in the movie, and it’s here that the proposition of the title is made. Local lawman Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) presents Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), an Irishman of questionable morality and criminality, with a deal: in order to save his younger brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) from the gallows, he must hunt down his psychotic older brother, Arthur (Danny Huston) and kill him.

It’s an easy enough deal, and one that Charlie seems to accept – except there’s flies in the ointment. Stanley’s deal is threatened by local landowner Eden Fletcher (David Wenham), as well as increasing pressures to capture troublemaking Aborigines, while Charlie’s mission is made more difficult by the appearance of a bounty hunter. From here on in, the story turns from what in other hands might’ve solely been a relentless hunting-down, into a meditation on family and the responsibilities it’s owed, both on the side of the law and the lawless.

The performances in the film are universally good, with some cast members being truly outstanding. Guy Pearce is, as expected, fine as the brother who must kill one of his siblings to save another – all unwashed, lank hair and rapid blinking. Danny Huston occasionally channels Billy Connolly – it could be the bushy hair and the wild-eyed, trickster demeanour – while elsewhere Leah Purcell and David Gulpilil provide some particularly subtle characters. The shittalking townsfolk – particularly the troopers who undermine Stanley when he’s not around – are a guilty pleasure, too.



The performance that really intrigues, however, is Ray Winstone’s Captain Stanley. It’s easily the best role of his career thus far, and though he is the instigator of the proposition that ultimately brings unhappiness to a number of the film’s characters, it’s very difficult to dislike him. Stanley’s interactions with his wife, Martha (Emily Watson) are always protective, though often wildly divergent in character. He’s a man adrift, lost in a world that he knows he must tame but is almost certain he cannot. The comments on colonialism, on identity, on power and on the idea of keeping up appearances that’re contained in Stanley’s character are manifold, though Winstone is careful enough not to turn his musings into proclamations. It’s a beautiful performance of a man who’s slowly disintegrating, who’s unable to fit where he’s put, and the emotion felt for the character at some junctures in the film is surprising and real.

Both Winstone and Pearce’s characters have a single-mindedness that puts the viewer very much in mind of the works of Patrick White; Voss in particular. The same sort of focus that that book’s titular character is given, the almost Christlike sense of being driven along a path that leads to unpleasantness or destruction is very much present in the two actors’ characters, and it’s a credit to them that they’re able to present it without losing credibility.

If there’s a downside to the performances in the film, it’s in the fact that David Wenham – while playing his role well – doesn’t really get the chance to perform to the degree that projects such as The Boys have shown he’s capable of. His Eden Fletcher remains something of a cipher throughout the film, which, while it makes the power he holds seem vaguely ominous, it also can make him appear a little two-dimensional. There’s more to him than starched collars, hair-oil and sadism, but sometimes it’s difficult to see it. A different disappointment comes in the form of John Hurt’s Jellon Lamb. He’s a wonderfully meaty character, though it seems that his role in the film – other than to highlight the quick-change nature of the surrounds – is somewhat undernourished.

Hillcoat’s direction contains a pretty meditative streak, something that’s certainly aided by the locale in which he’s shooting. The long, penetrating shots of the outside of the prison facility that gave Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead its oppressive feel return in The Proposition, but here, they’re focused on natural features, not man-made constructions. But the menace that many of these views hold is the same: we’re dealing with a landscape that’s no less dangerous than prison. In many ways, it’s more dangerous, because in this film, the power and malevolence that’s exhibited seems to come from the idea of nature asserting itself, of nature being given free reign. Indeed, in some shots, where the eldest, psychotic brother howls at the sky like a dingo, the feeling of channelled strength, of nature-invoked nastiness is very difficult to shake off.



There’s been much made about the use of violence in The Proposition, and many have suggested that it’s the case that Cave has been indulging his penchant for a bit of bloodletting, out of all step with the narrative. But from my viewing, I must say that this is a wholly inaccurate criticism of what occurs. The film is violent. This violence, however, is a reflection of both the landscape and the people upon it. There are scenes of incredible violence, but they are never gratuitous, except in one instance – but the abundance of gore in that particular scene is used to illustrate the fundamental lack of understanding of human limitations by one of the film’s major characters (Wenham’s landowner). Not only is this an instance of violence being used for character development – not shock – but it’s also something that’s commented upon by the small town’s chorus of locals. At the junction I’m referring to – and it’s pretty plain in the movie which it is – even the hardest, meanest frontier survivors blanch at what’s been dished out. There’s palpable disgust and dismay. (That, of course, is without getting into the evocations of Christ that the scene is filled with.)

Where Cave’s musical and filmic portrayals of violence differ is that here, there’s no nudge-nudge, Murder Ballads tongue-in-cheek feeling to take the edge off. You get the feeling, more than in any of his other work, that this is For Real. (Of course, this is perhaps criminally underplaying Hillcoat’s contributions, but given that the script dictates how things proceed onscreen, I believe it’s apt.)

The fundamental problem I see with accusations of wilful violence in the film is that it negates something that’s fundamentally true about the era that’s depicted: it was a time of violence. It was the time of the bushranger, the time of. Aboriginal denegration and destruction. The time for figures of authority who openly resorted to violence to contain locals who were often only a short step away from convicts. There’s a tendency to want to portray all people living at the point where civilization and the unknown hit each other as being somehow all upstanding: all goodly folk, free of disease, despair, and the smell of shit. It’s true, there’s a new century just around the corner from when this film’s set – but the action here happens away from the bright lights and big cities. It occurs in the moral miasma of the rural, a place where the strength of the residents was the difference between survival and failure, and it strikes me that it’d be a failure on the part of the filmmakers if they caved – no pun intended – on this particular point of realism.

The violence in the film isn’t such that it should stop anyone watching, but it is explicit, and in context, supports the story. Hillcoat’s style of direction seems to be set against the idea of showing anything that doesn’t contribute to the advancement of the story – this is a lean film, in many ways – and so it would be a bit of a fool’s errand to stuff in some bloodlust simply for the sake of it.

As you’d expect, the score – a joint effort between Cave and fellow Bad Seed (and Dirty Three main man) Warren Ellis – has a distinctly wire-and-wind quality to it that befits the action. There’s a distinct feeling of development as the film progresses, and the music’s underplayed in a way that allows the action onscreen – and not the names behind the tunes – to take your attention. It provides feeling by stealth, in an almost unobtrusive way, something that’s lost on many soundtrack composers today. There’s moments of heightened tension, usually ushered in by sinuous violin lines, but by and large it’s the subtlety of the soundtrack that really scores points for the film.

The Proposition is a film that’s as solidly satisfying as a novel, yet as shocking (in places) as a slasher flick. It’s not a stock-standard western, but neither is it the sepia-toned morass of self-congratulation that many films on early Australia are. It’s different, and it’s important, and it’s the sort of film that you hope would get a lot of attention overseas, if only to show that there’s more to us than Strictly Ballroom or Priscilla.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this film speaks to Australians more fulsomely about the harshness of their country’s earlier times than scores of films before it. It’s brutal, bloody, brotherly love wrapped in the thin tissue of societal boundaries, and it gives the audience no chance to look away, no chance to catch their breath. Like the place in which it is set, the film is both beautiful and unforgiving, both vital and dead. It is a joy to watch, a terror to behold, and, quite simply, one of the finest Australian films ever made. See it.

This article originally appeared on FasterLouder.com.au. I am no longer associated with that website and, as copyright owner, have moved it here for permanent record.