Our Man in Eden Hill

AMG Review of Our Man in Eden Hill

Ned Raggett
All Music Guide

Tangled Star have dealt with an alt country tag for a while, but the Australian band shouldn't be shoehorned into such a particular niche -- if anything, they fall in the same line of descent as, say, the Walkabouts, equally inspired by Australian bands of a certain time and place but neither limited to their sounds nor a belief that all one needs is a bit of twang. The rich, gentle roil of sound evidenced on Our Man in Eden Hill, the band's third overall release, has the same surging, warmly anthemic sound of stellar forebears galore, each sonically different -- the Triffids, Died Pretty, perhaps most inevitably the Go-Betweens -- but which altogether seem to capture a sense and a style more than might be guessed, something detailed, mournful, and a little crushing even at its strongest; feedback and background flows of classic keyboards and steady drumming all interplaying behind lead singer Craig Hallsworth's work. By putting it all together and adding their own touches -- the suddenly thrilling funk/psych guitar shades on "The Skaters," for instance -- Tangled Star help make a claim on something more than re-creation. The group's sense of rock history might perhaps wear too heavily at points -- calling a song "Sunny Day Losers #12 and #35" almost seems designed to generate nods of approval from the type of people who always give nods of approval to anything involving Dylan -- but all it takes is a suddenly lovely piano break on that same song to remind you why the whole thing is worth listening to.