If sheer guts and determination were enough to win the day, then it would be hard to resist giving the gold to NIGHT ARTERY main man Ross Arundale. After all, he self-funded, produced and provided the recording space for his debut EP 'Capsize Your Surroundings' on the back of two years back-breaking work wielding a sledgehammer on the Australian railroad. An unforgiving environment, I should imagine, but not enough to deter our hero, who “never considered a back-up plan.” Respect for this alone is surely due, all things considered.
All too often, though, such Herculean effort can fall on stony ground, when a series of reviewers and the public in general then dash such good intentions on the rocks of indifference. And sometimes they'd be right. After all, great art rarely equates with sweat, toil and graft.
Thankfully, however, 'Capsize Your Surroundings' is – creatively at least – not one of those misfires. Arundale himself plays all the instruments. He treats us to four songs and an unlisted piano track at the end which serves as something of a credit-roller. His label's name 'Cinematical' is certainly relevant, for there's certainly an epic, filmic quality keen to burst out of these tracks. In fact, such is the dramatic sweep of Night Artery's music sometimes I wonder if Ross wrote these songs with a short film in mind, even if it's an imaginary one along the lines of Barry Adamson's atmospheric 'Moss Side Story.'
Opener 'An Act Ill-Informed Of Returns' thrusts you headlong into his widescreen pop. As the title suggests, his music is slightly high-brow and quirky, though it's certainly in touch with great pop too. Perhaps inevitably, the countrymen Ross evokes are the likes of Grant McLennan and David McComb, individuals who were rarely found wanting when evocative imagery was concerned. Arundale has a way with an engaging lyric too (sample: “be wary of thieves...they vie to spill your ardor”) and when he allies such observations to these thrilling, string and piano-assisted soundscapes, he's on to something of a winner.
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The rest of the EP maintains these exacting standards. Despite a title more akin to a Guided By Voices out-take, 'Cinematical Shards On The Permanent Way' makes an immediate impact. It's nagging, urgent (not a million miles from mid-period Go-Betweens or even The Smiths at a push)and quickly gets under your skin; even leaving a gorgeous, blink-and-you'll-miss-it piano solo in its' wake. 'Nerve Endings', meanwhile, is the slowburning stand-out. Even allowing for a slightly elliptical lyric (“I'll sharpen my absent eye of a rarity placed in front of me”), it's vivid and compelling and simply smoulders.
'Glass Corners' is the last of the four 'proper' tracks and surely the most strident. There's a cocksure urgency to the funkily insistent guitar and Ross absolutely sings his heart out here. Once again, the song's landscape and tempo shifts with heart-stopping intensity and flings your emotions around. Indeed, it's not always easy to get comfortable while you're negotiating the tight bends and chicanes this EP winds around, but the thrill of the chase is everything and repeated circuits allow just enough familiarity for you to enjoy it to the hilt.
Which is probably a good overview where this intelligent and ambitious EP is concerned. Ross Arundale is clearly a man unperturbed by either hard work or the climb required to attain artistic success along the way. 'Capsize Your Surroundings' may have been a hard-won labour of love, but it's a first born to be rightly proud of. Let's hope it's the first of many where this young man's concerned.
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