Review Summary: The trio continue what they started on Sunrise Over Sea with a slightly stronger lean towards rock rather than folk. It’s still damn fine, but not all of it is the Trio’s best work unfortunately.
With
Sunrise Over Sea, The John Butler Trio cemented their place in both the Australian rock and folk scene, now nobody doubted whether or not
Three was a fluke, they knew full well that it wasn’t. In 2005, Nicky Bomba left, and the trio found his replacement in New Zealand drummer, Michael Barker. This increased anticipation for the follow-up to
S.O.S, which had been reasonably high anyway. What direction would the new record take? Would it be a carbon copy of
S.O.S or
Three, or would they continue to innovate on their sound and keep exploring their capabilities?
The lead single, “Funky Tonight”, answers those questions to a reasonable extent. A fast paced “hoe-down” style rocker, it leaves little doubt that Butler’s skills with the guitar are still in fine-form, with his rapid finger-picking as skilful as ever. The new drummer’s tribal percussion mid-way through and a steel-pan section towards the end tell us he is quite possibly Bomba’s equal. Shannon Birchall, the bassist, also lays down yet another groovy line that stands amongst his best. To top it all off, there’s a lovely appearance by a didgeridoo in sections and a gorgeous harmonica performance at the end. “Funky Tonight” contains most of what makes The John Butler Trio great.
The rest of the album contains varying degrees of success. “Better Than”, for instance, stands out as a clear, radio-friendly single, but is actually rather pedestrian for the trio. It’s the closest they’ve come to being generic and that won’t stick too well for some listeners. Despite that, Butler still manages to pull a few good one-liners with the lyrics and pull back from the brink of mediocrity. Very few artists can produce lines like “I know the grass is greener, but just as hard to mow” in reference to the cliché phrase “the grass is always greener on the other side”. The slight regression can easily be forgiven simply because it is only a small one.
On the other side of things there’s “Gov’ Did Nothing”, an eight minute epic that sounds like a more energetic version of “Money”, from
Three. Beginning with lyrics blaming George Bush on the lack of aid for the New Orleans hurricane debacle (“do you really think the gov’d do nothing if all those people were white?”) before moving into a tribal percussion solo, then into a lengthy but nevertheless excellent sitar solo by Butler, and then into… wait a second… is that a brass section? Something completely different to anything else he’s done before, the group incorporate an entire brass section into the final 2 minutes of the song.
The surprises keep coming as well, like the grinding, distorted riff that rules the chorus of “Devil Running”. The song would have been classified as metal or hard-rock if Butler had used harsh vocals. The rest of the song is par for the course, but the chorus really does present a side of Butler’s guitar that’s quite different to his usual style.
Sunrise Over Sea made up for its commercial sound by adding depth and atmosphere to several of its songs, unfortunately
Grand National lacks that. Don’t get me wrong, there is subtlety here, and there’s certainly some excellent experimentation, but when the trio aren’t experimenting they’re regressing into an even more made-for-radio sound and that makes it seem logical to call this their worst album. It’s still head and shoulders above anything else out there, but they’ve made better. When taken in the context of their entire discography (including their latest,
April Uprising),
Grand National becomes the middle child. Its rockier sound is still trying to separate itself from its folk half, creating a mixture of the two that just doesn’t sit as well as it did with the other albums.
