Original Talent
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 11, 2003
JOHN WIBBERLEY
From the Ocean
(Long Sleep Plains LSP 003 through www.johnwibberley.com and MGM Distribution)
It is almost too easy to berate multinational record companies for their stupidity. Here's another example of an important Australian talent which the men with money have no idea how to handle. Wibberley started with Festival Records and has retreated to self-recording and selling his CDs at gigs and on the internet.
The problem for the music industry is that Wibberley hovers somewhere on the edge of country music and he sounds like no one else. He's a true original. He tours outback Australia, he plays country music festivals, but he's about as far removed from Slim and Lee as any performer can be.
His new album, the final part of a trilogy of recordings, features Wibberley on guitar and vocals backed only by Jo Lack on violin and Mark Punch (the producer) on guitar, keyboards and percussion. Hardly the usual country lineup.
Wibberley's style is almost undefinable. It is immediately accessible, even commercial, with its delicate lyricism. His voice, clear and very gently husky, is more like a polite
and sweet Steve Earle than anyone else. The music, constantly shot through by melancholy violin and pared down to low-key guitars, has no recognisable parallels.
The lyrics, on one level story songs in a country music vein, somehow break the conventions. It is this uniqueness which obviously creates problems for the record industry. Where does Wibberley belong?
In the country bin?
In the pop section?
With the folkies? Too difficult to market.
Listen to Taxi Driver and the problem becomes obvious. Here's a simple song about lost love. But how does anyone describe something so carefully minimal where Wibberley's voice is set against low-key guitar with occasional tiny fills of haunting keyboards and backing vocals from Mark Punch? It is an extraordinarily beautiful song.
Equally, Trouble Town has a fragility and sensitivity which is more commonly associated with singer/songwriters such as Ron Sexsmith who work in that zone of musical depth which exists beyond the shallow edges of popularity and success.
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald
