Mushroom Music Publishing

The man is blessed with the humour of a detained schoolboy and the grim wisdom of the neighbourhood sage. I have slunk into his avuncular embrace, laughed like a donkey at his roadside manner, been slack-jaw enlightened at his gymnastic musical leaps of fancy and ducked and weaved astride the best frontman I’ve had the indulgence of sparring with.

Much is made of his presence, his command and raw power. How he can churn, chop and heave all that into the Tex Perkins of the Dark Horses is either sorcery or, more likely, wanderlust. The same vigour which enables him to be the aforementioned frontman also affords the Dark Horses an authority to make profuse, uncompromising records: potent and uninhibited. Lazy minds will refer to these records as “mellow” or “stripped back”. As if peeling back your own skin was a placid activity.

We have been invited to a feast! Tex Perkins & The Dark Horses our hosts: “What Do You Want Now?” lopes like a fly fish line; its familiar chords are adorned with the burr of our host, and with a knee buckling surprise of a chorus. We’re being accompanied to the front door. Good, swinging company; it’s a warm dusk.

The bicep snap intro of “Life Gets In The Way” is our welcoming aperitif, and letting us know the band is sitting in for the night. Charlie Owen, Murray Paterson, Joel Silbersher, Steve Hadley and Gus Agars; too good looking by half and will charm the strides off you, and whoever you came with. Paterson looming ever more enigmatic with every 3 minute tone poem he pens; I doubt there’s a better songwriting partnership roaming the hinterlands. When the party is long over, Murray would’ve left something on a napkin that will puzzle and beguile you for months.

It’s a line in “Life Gets...” that portends a change in mood, a darkness. It’s slight, but “tears only make you wetter” is a bon mot with teeth. The songs played through our beggar’s banquet are about designs, expectancy, and the bitter sting of disenchantment. “Happiness comes when desire goes” from “Necessary Evil” and the remedial recipes offered in “Everything is Gonna Be Alright”, are the terse missives of the previously silent guest beside you at the table who has imbibed every liquor and tincture with you, yet remained lucid in the face of your befuddlement.

The warm, convivial walk to the house is now a remote memory. “Snakes” concludes a post feast dispatch from the third circle of some sort of hell. A kiss off, or piss off in the form of “Easier Without You” as you’re shown the door. But the capacious hearts of The Horses invite you back in for “Things Don’t Seem So Bad After All”. Languid and ropey; all good humour and cordiality. Only writers and bands totally assured of their worth would offer such comradeship.

A record, a nights’ revels where only the faint hearted would leave unchanged. Gravitas, gristle and authority. Whether satyrs, seducers or sonic reducers, Tex Perkins and The Dark Horses have invited you into their lair, and stolen your craven souls.

Tim Rogers