We care more about Australian country music than most things…
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[5.42]
Josh Langhoff: Back on the farm* we lived right up against the parade route, a mile give or take from the schoolhouse — just a short walk across the railroad bridge and there you are. This proved handy during summer marching band practice, because I could sometimes walk my friends home for dinner. Generally Mama’d have a pot of sun tea going and maybe a grape pie if the grapes had come in and the coons hadn’t got to them. Now, Daddy being the pastor, every 4th we’d have church folks over after the parade to sit around the yard, cook out, climb the big old pine and catch fireflies. Come the summer Amber the church flute player entered high school, all us marching band boys were obsessed with her, talking about her nonstop and probably acting like a bunch of goony creeps in her presence — I expect Anita Hill felt a similar welcome at those Senate hearings the year prior. But here I had the upper hand, see, because I knew Amber’d be coming to our place for the parade after practice got out, and how’s she gonna get there? Chances are she’s gonna walk over with me. Weeks before the 4th I was already rifling through scenarios in my mind, rearranging the posters on my wall for maximum impact — remember, this is the first time she’s gonna see my room — and more or less surveying all my material possessions the way I imagine she’s gonna see them and get impressed at my hospitality. Delighting in my stuff! (Pretty common impulse, I reckoned — remember when John Anderson sang about the Black Sheep’s in-laws, “They like to get together and talk about all the things they got”?) So you know how excited I was to walk in the kitchen July 3rd and hear Mama talking to Amber’s mom on the phone, setting up the whole me-walking-her-over deal. Day came, and I guess we walked that mile together without discussing anything beyond the heat. She didn’t much care to see my room either, but boy did I get proud when she tasted Mama’s grape pie. Thought that’d be my ticket for sure. By summer’s end she was going out with Jake. (*OK, it was Daddy’s square foot garden.)
[6]
Edward Okulicz: Australia has a Nashville of its own; it’s called Tamworth. You can live in a big city, like more than half of Australia’s population does, and be completely ignorant of what’s going on there, as it’s a five-hour drive from Sydney and seven from Brisbane. Tamworth’s biggest stars generally don’t enter the singles charts and country radio stations are really only found in regional cities and rural areas. And our musical culture still venerates the idea of the road, the farm, the pastoralist fantasy, the simple life, in a way that some of contemporary Nashville country has moved on from somewhat. Much as we grow sugar cane rather than corn, so too do we move to a slightly different strum. To foreign ears, I can imagine this comes across as quaint, and well it might, as it’s an earnest and well-executed bit of hokey cuteness. Arcus’ accent is a different kind of aw-shucks to what you might hear on U.S. country radio, but its gentle folksiness sells the song’s topics of gentle pleasures. He has a nice way with a tune, and little flicks of piano and fiddle are deployed effectively. Sometimes it’s nice to hear the accent I grew up with over the type of music I love most now and not do so with a cringe. It sounds good, but it definitely wants for the bigger melodic sweep I’ve become accustomed to from Nashville.
[6]
Stephen Thomas Erlewine: A throwback to a throwback, Roo Arcus recalls the hat acts of the ’90s, who sang songs like they used to back in the ’60s. Australia always has had a weakness for this kind of country corn — as they should, they have cattle country just like Texas — and there’s no denying this is supreme corn, trafficking in nostalgia, family, the homestead and beer, the same touchstones that will forever fuel hits coming out of the Music City. Arcus possesses a nice twang and the production is crisp, suggesting neither Strait nor Brooks so much as Chris LeDoux, the Garth hero who managed a comeback in the ’90s on the back of Brooks’ support, so it’s all very pleasing even when it seems supremely silly… and it seems supremely silly from its opening second.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Jody Rosen’s astonishing essay on schmaltz made me reconsider Alan Jackson, whose nostalgia was explicitly conservative, and who was often the most reactionary voice in country music — I mean that literally; he was the place where nostalgia moved into a sociopolitical discussion that over-simplified and often erased the vices of the South for a vaseline-lensed view of swimming or driving or being with family. That his most significant work in the last few years has been a collection of hymns, named after the schmaltziest hymn ever suggests that though the reclamation of schmaltz, like the reclamation of kitsch, has important social and political contexts, it also has a political side — one that leaves the only way out of a text as backwards. With the recent Abbott budget, the austerity project double-downed, and the collapse of support for academic work especially, no matter how beautiful the voice is, how seamless the production is, how vital schmaltz is as a tool, its full complexity as a strategy must be held in tension.
[8]
Alfred Soto: The uncanniest Alan Jackson impersonation I’ve ever heard, from the guitar twang and the way he comes down hard on the “b” in “beer” to the celebration of family Polaroids. Jackson would’ve known how to wink his way through “chew your ear” though.
[5]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Arcus gets repetitive pretty quickly, running back over the same points — beer, kids, farm, beer, kids, farm — like he’s stubbornly protesting the very existence of the thesaurus. But the simplicity of “Out On The Farm” also lends it a homely relatability. The farm could be a porch to you, the lake could be the bus, but a six-pack of beer is a six-pack and a kettle is a kettle. Some comforts are simply universal.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: Roo Arcus’ YouTube page features four videos: two are devoted to Arcus documenting a trip spent grazing cattle, one on how to make cracks for a stock whip and “Out on the Farm.” He’s touted as a country “traditionalist,” and if his cow-herding background and song titles (“Church On The Hill,” “Bluecollarville”) weren’t enough to prove it, “Out on the Farm’s” Alan-Jackson breeziness and rural-worship definitely puts him on the opposite side of the spectrum from the chug-a-lug hijinks of most contemporary male country singers. Despite knowing I would probably never want to chat about politics with him, the simpleness, naivety and nostalgia here is charming, even if it only goes so far musically. Have no idea how this fits into the Australian country-music world, but it’s a decent throwback in any case.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: The harvest is rather thin this year.
[3]
Megan Harrington: Lyrically, “Out on the Farm” doesn’t do much for me. It’s strong Nashville storytelling, but watching kids play while I sit on a porch and drink beer very slowly so as not to accidentally become impaired is, if I’m lucky, closer to my future than my wildest dream. Arcus’ guitar is just luscious, a sound that can’t be faked like a tall tale of family fun, and that’s ultimately what brings the song to life.
[7]
Brad Shoup: If it’s just me and Wes and a playlist of Ultimate Warrior promos, I might buy a six-pack. I guess if I were visiting friends with kids, a suitcase is presumptuous. “Out on the Farm” is about as pleasant and surface-dwelling as time with the fam: there’s something here that’s unknowable, and perhaps that’s as it should be, but it’s a nice little experience. Maybe there’s another reading, one in which Roo’s doing everything he can to make his place inviting so his buds will want to drop by to disrupt the monotony. Those guitars can dig out a riff, but the fiddle will name the day.
[6]
Thomas Inskeep: Influences: George Strait. Likes: George Strait. Sounds like: George Strait. Recommended if you like: George Strait. Only Australian.
[5]
David Sheffieck: The closest you can get to Muzak while still using a vocal. But it’s kinda adorable that “Everyone in this video are Roo’s real family, friends and neighbours,” so up a point for the lack of budget that went into this.
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