SAM SHINAZZI – ON A HIGHWAY SOMEWHERE: REVIEW
- Bernard Zuel
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
SAM SHINAZZI
On A Highway Somewhere (Stanley Records)
BEFORE WE GET TO THE GOOD or bad, let’s establish the lay of the land, because your propensity for or resistance to a certain style, certain motifs, certain, shall we say, familiar routes, will play a big part in whether On A Highway Somewhere is a keeper or a loser.
The first clue is in that title and the cover image of a desolate road fringed with power poles and weeds. Off the main byways, caught between towns whose limitations are as much internal as external, it’s a path, but to something or from something? On it travel characters who exist in a world much like that road, narrowed by reduced options and lowered skies but going on regardless.
They aren’t dealing with matters of state or issues of great import beyond their lives, but that is not to say these things don’t matter, nor that decisions made (or not made) don’t have important repercussions. Everything counts in large amounts when you might be left alone tonight and wherever you walk you find bits and pieces of what used to be. All things reflect the sudden glorious light when you are prompted to declare “I wanna be your boyfriend, won’t you help me along”. Nothing cries failure like another Christmas built on a memory, not a reality.
And nothing sounds as wracked with memories, as buffeted by promises, as burdened with explanations, as the voice telling these stories. It cracks at the edges and warps in the centre sometimes, not from inability but from too close familiarity with shit complicating life.
The second clue comes in the musical references, both stated and implied, both instrumentally (fairground organs bowed but not broken; guitars that bend towards some crack in the dark or come rushing at you; basslines that come three beers in on a Sunday afternoon or two lines up on a Friday night; drums which are always self-effacing, even when assertive) and lyrically.
From Bruce Springsteen and Paul Kelly (and Paul Kelly and Bruce Springsteen) to The Ramones and Husker Du (the song Grant Hart Can’t Find The Keys To His Car isn’t pretending). From John Kennedy (Erskineville’s favourite Queenslander, not the former president) and Perry Keyes to John Prine and Jason Isbell. Plus that bloke in the bar who will be playing whether you’re listening or not, caring about every nameless character in the background of his covers like they are his own.
And then there’s the one cover and closing song on the album, Lucinda William’s crushed night of the soul, Blue, which turns to the jukebox for love and consolation when the only thing that can be counted on is blue, “the colour of night, when the red sun disappears from the sky”. If the message had not been clear enough from the preceding eight songs, Blue is a sonic and emotional palliative.
Sound up your alley, theoretically? If so, Sam Shinazzi shows you can make the familiar, even very familiar, differentiate if you can convince us of the personal. And that comes in the huskiness of this record, which in this case isn’t really about the voice but the shadings and excavations it describes in small ways.
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APPLE MUSIC: Listen to Sam Shinazzi – On A Highway Somewhere