Search - Not Drowning Waving :: Through the One Last Door: Best of

The best obscure band ever?

dtp | Albuquerque, NM | 08/15/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Back in the early nineties, I managed to purchase the majority of the Not Drowning, Waving albums on CD, for about a $1.00 each in a discount bin. Why? A friend of mine said that this was the best band I'd NEVER heard. He was right. I treasured those CDs as if I paid $100 each for them. Sadly, my house was broken into and every single disc I'd bought, including all of Not Drowning, Waving, was gone. All I had left was a tape of instrumentals. Further checks on the internet showed that I was lucky to ever get any of their albums in the first place, as they were, for the most part, impossible to get, at least in America.



This collection rectifies that. Perhaps a larger group of people can listen to them now, although with the music industry as it is, I doubt it. (The liner notes mention humorously how they were a massive failure).



Maybe this review will inspire even one person to buy this collection.



How do you describe their music? Evocative, pure, spacious, elegant. Washes of piano and cello intermingling. Samples used, before they were common, in the most unusual fashion, like the voice in "Norman Young." Or what sounds like crickets in rhythm in "Brother Norbert." And the child's voices in "Marriage is a Mess." Sometimes the arrangements are non-traditional and almost like field recordings with music over them like "Azahe." I can't remember if I've hear a cello solo in a pop song, but it is there in all of its beauty in "Walk Me Home". Or how about the guitars that sound like a massive orchestra from another world on "Big Sky"? I dare anyone to figure out when most of these recordings were made. No Australian band of the time, or any time, sounded like this. Their instrumental work would appeal to fans of Lanois or Eno.



And that doesn't even begin to describe the lyrics that David Bridie wrote. No "I love you baby" here, although relationships are explored, to a sometimes devastating effect, like in "Marriage is a Mess": "when there's nothing much to work for/you'd have to say life gets stale /well there's forty miles of suburbs/where everythings for sale." However, the best lyrics he wrote were in a song called "Perfect Design", which is unfortunately not included in this two disc set, but other than that, the songs truly are the best of the work they recorded from the 80s-90s, and I especially enjoy that disc one is instrumental and disc two is vocal. Fans of Talk Talk, Mark Hollis or Augie March would love this.



So, to that one person out there, give it a shot."