There’s so much great music that is beyond the mainstream. Plenty of them write from their own point of view, inside their heart, and take it a step further. For Alice Austin, she brings her own brainstorming techniques on her latest release, Goodnight Euphoria. Her new album is a variation trip down memory lane by proving herself that she’s more than just a singer, but a fighter to bring her music to life on the silver screen.
But for Alice who’s been around for 27 years from Zola Turn, Queen Tangerine, and The Lavas, she’s like a machine that’ll never turn off. Alongside as the lead singer for the cover band Black Sabbitch, who were handpicked by Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne by opening the Ozzfiesta, followed by Dave Grohl to play Cal Jam with both Foo Fighters and Iggy Pop, Goodnight Euphoria makes you want to take a ride with her into these unbelievable sceneries.
‘Jellyfish’ is almost a sequel to Pink Floyd’s ‘Fearless’ from the Meddle album. She and David Drouin walk high up into the mountains with a country-tinged background in the styles of Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons. It’s quite a unique song honoring Gilmour’s textures that Drouin channels as the hallways of self-destruction, becomes an organ-driven, ‘60s sliding arrangement with Alice’s ‘Wooden Mind’.
You feel the isolation, no one to help you, and trying to stay alive from the pressures of fame and stardom. But then she dives into a mariachi fanfare with a Dutch psychedelic background with spaghetti western atmosphere’s by walking towards ‘The Neighborhood’.
As she comes out of the pool after a nice long swimming exercise, she goes back into her car for another drive into the country for this reflective romance on this characterisation that has finished their last dance together before going into the afterlife on ‘Never Occurred to Me’.
It has some strong resemblance to Nikki Costa’s ‘Push & Pull’ from the 2001 soundtrack to Ted Demme’s final movie, Blow starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz. You can tell that Alice admires Nikki’s arrangements of the song. And I can imagine Nikki’s music might have been an inspiration for Alice while she was writing the tenth track as she was writing material for Goodnight Euphoria.
Alice goes for those emotional tugs to remember the good times she once had while staying in for the night in the middle of a Nevada desert between the uplifting melodies on ‘Relentless Sunshine’ and the Beck-sque touches on ‘Devil’s Haircut’ for the opening track, ‘No Such Thing’.
But after a long hot night, she drives back home with three closing gems; a crossover between The Last Hurrah’s Maesa Pullman, a folk-country twist of The Beatles Rubber Soul-era meets the Netherlands answer to the Canterbury scene of Supersister’s ‘No Tree Will Grow (On Too High a Mountain)’ for ‘Everything You Touch’, the dooming Jailhouse folk serving life composition for ‘The Ward’, and the early McCartney-like finale, ‘Saving My Tears’.
Austin proves listeners that she has finally reached the surface by completing her mission to make it towards the light at the end of the tunnel. It took me awhile to get into her music, but it has suddenly grown on me for many, many listens to appreciate what she’s brought to the kitchen table. And Goodnight Euphoria is a dish well served.
