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Over The Stones, Under The Stars

by Ned Collette & Wirewalker

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  • Digital Album
    Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Ned Collette's third full length album, also the first made solely with Wirewalker as his band. Comes with full original CD artwork.
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Gatefold CD featuring full artwork and lyrics, cover painting by Anna Steele and photography by Karl Scullin (of KES fame).

    Includes unlimited streaming of Over The Stones, Under The Stars via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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1.
The Idealist 03:59
Of all the people that you knew in you youth There was just one who gave you solace true And though it pains me now to see we are through The sky is not blue anymore So when he rushes through the door to rescind your sins You would be foolish not to take that man in We set out to start again With new mottos and new friends But we stumbled on the artefacts of old Inside houses of the young Grew tiredness with what we’d sung As they would dance and fight And bicker through the night I heard it by decree and so I screened that telephone call To tell me there’s no one who possibly can do it all There’ll be no further action and there’ll be no further call So battle lines need not be drawn anymore Take flight take heed o please Just walk out the door A moving symphony of love’s greatest light Will appear And take you away from here
2.
All the signs are there you know she said On coming home and sitting on the bed They just call us clients now And everything we learn somehow is dead Something runs afoul of all we learn And learning isn't learning when the learning's just to earn Unfashionable it may seem But cutting it that way is not a dream Of mine And oh, they took you for the last, and then they held your past To ransom 'cause it did not fit their ways But if this is some golden age why do you feel alone 'Cause gold is just a stipend and the age is just for show Well I said does your suffering make you strong If I applaud your suffering will you give me your soul Well that's just from a book you read - the one that sits here by this bed And though the idea's good it isn't your idea at all And oh, must everything good be past Everything made to last Or are these just excuses borne of change 'Cause if this is some golden age why do you feel alone In thinking by our progress we have just stripped off our bones And now the Devil's skin lies on the floor His advocacy's crumbled in the smelter of the law And though we cannot be surprised when metal from it's ore is prised The argument is won but now the truth is such a bore And oh, they took you for the last, and then they held your past To ransom 'cause it did not fit their way And if this is some golden age it's you who feels alone They've played their card, the rain is hard and it's someone else's home
3.
There’s nothing for you here anymore even when you go out in public it’s a private war. No one gazes up at you now – all eyes are fixed, all heads are bowed. And everybody likes the same stuff; somehow what we’re given is always exactly enough. No one needs to question the new, ‘cause then they’d have to deal with the old and that wou- ldn’t do. And you say, “Maybe we’re living in a golden age; where everything that’s dreamt of is made.” We sit here watching sex on the news, and it might titillate if we weren’t so afraid of the flu. It seems there can be nothing to fear though, in an age when a man loses weight and they call him a hero. “If only I could get to the facts!” Just change the channel – you’ll find all opinions are routinely backed. And you say, “Maybe we’re living in a golden age; where anyone who dreams it is made. And you’ll be accused of being unclear by this literal generation here, or prob- ably just ridiculed for trying to be sin- cere. It’s what they wish for most of all because it’s what they fear.
4.
Come Clean 05:10
Your little town has gone to sleep Guided softly towards better times Luxury we'd never see It's what forced us to go on The winter pale and slender lost To the human sod of history Emily come back to me I mean you no more harm And your face is but a dream to me See the teams come one by one They shadow our light fitfully Luxury we had not seen It's what caused us to collapse As they dismantled all your charms With their houses built on solitude Solid ground, where are you now? You're all I've got to hold And all of you was real So real In crazy blue eyed dreams You came clean And they could not bear our love And I did not have the trust Robbery, the highway kind And your murder was foretold And all of you is real So real In crazy blue eyed dreams I come clean
5.
Mr Day 04:44
Hey Mr Day, why have you lost your heart? You need to find your beauty in the dark – shadows to guide you and love will be your star. Hey Mrs Night, your darkness is your light. Go to your man – he thinks he’s lost his fight. Answer his questions and give him back his sight. All now to sleep for soon we’ll have our date. We need to leave these two to coru- scate. No obsequies now, consider it too late.
6.
Aspect 06:29
Morning and the aspect of your body as the light comes through the blear. Every day a circus of your solitary musings in my ear. Can you imagine certainty, a landscape of so many corked ideas? Drifting in modernity, believing in the shatter-proof, the everyday serene in all the blonde and blue-eyed children that it rears. The sisters come to take you back, fill your head with barren tact. Parting fingers, one last touch and smile… Early on the Tuesday before losing you forever I’m awake Jerking through the motions of a man who is considering escape Is considerately fake Is considerably late
7.
She walked so lightly I thought she would fade Into the pale memoried world she had made And he looked always ahead to her back And though he would run it was always her back Shelving their hearts for the sake of the song Their chords turned to minor in order to just get along But there was no peace and out in the slow palling light Were reflected the words she would offer to him every night “it’s only love and that’s why we can be apart” Well boys turn to men and the women they love stay the same Languid and tall and the curve of her breast is the same Laughing from eyes set to call forth the history of youth But everything dulls for the man who has danced with the truth “it’s only love and that’s why we can be apart”
8.
Polly Angel 05:19
When they let her go they said “you’d better run” So Polly caught the first bus into town. Everybody stared at Polly’s golden hair, and in the night she woke. The next day found her floating on a cloud. Above the city floating on a cloud. “I don’t know the way!” she cried. “Don’t worry you’ll be fine.” “But all I have is love to give.” “That’s what we had in mind” Polly Angel, Angel Polly And somehow over twenty years have passed since sighing softly Polly breathed her last. And as you walk around the town – see people smiling bright, and all they have is love to give – you’ll know that she was right.
9.
I Had A Love 05:34
I had a love we walked together over the stones under the stars throughout the days we just kept walking I had a love where you gonna find her where you gonna find her now? where you gonna look in this catastrophic town where have all the poets gone with their words that used to save? given way to fellowships of mediocre days
10.
I am travelling all the way to Rome Dry your eyes – I have to go alone Oh my love I’ll miss you dressed in blue Oh my city all roads lead back to you Please I ask you, let me off my knees Oh my love you’ll always be with me These times are so dangerous dressed in white Oh my heroes take me towards the light

about

Ned Collette's third album, and the first recorded entirely with Wirewalker. Mostly written during the 2008/09 Glasgow winter, recorded on a rural property in Victoria, Australia and mixed by Joel Hamilton in New York City in the summer of 2009.

From Mess & Noise Magazine (Aus):

"Sadly, there’s no guarantee the human race will go out with a bang. More likely it’ll dwindle away just as it did in Ballard’s The Drowned World - all our luxuries and exploits will rouse nature and she’ll eventually take herself back, forcing us to take refuge on the margins of the land we’ve made inhospitable. If that seems unavoidable, well, that’s because it most probably is, and here Ned Collette rails against the corrosive, privileged ennui that threatens to drown the modern world; the dangerous apathy, the spoon-fed indifference, the mores of a “golden age” that could soon burn out.

Because Ned Collette’s music isn’t a cosy refuge anymore, it’s a place for mulling over uncomfortable truths; for taking stock of just how fucked we’ve become. Here, a song can begin triumphantly but end on a sour note. During ‘All The Signs’, Collette denounces learning “just to earn” in favour of knowledge for the sake of it. He promises, over a lush bed of organs and rich guitar chords that “as unfashionable as it may seem, cutting it that way is not a dream of mine”. You want to punch the air along with him in his indignant cry, but his passion turns to bitterness by the last verse; the stern, circuitous ensemble mimicking pride’s intoxicated swagger and its eventual wobbly collapse. It’s a long way from the domestic comforts of 2006 debut Jokes and Trials, and even the markedly less “topical” songs seem bluntly reprimanding; the tirades of a drunk cynic.

There are a few songs here like that - so uninhibited in their mission to denounce the follies of modern life that they’re prone to become exhausting. I loved this album for a while, picked it apart like all Collette’s work deserves, found it astonishingly brilliant and then cowered from it: its blunt honesty too overwhelming, too close to home. It’s not a brash call to arms or anything like that - this isn’t John fucking Butler. ‘Your Golden Heart’ in particular dwells long and thoroughly on the familiar pitfalls of 21st century life and results in what can feel like a lecture, but with no quick fixes to blindly spruik.

But we need songwriters like Collette in a world where these “blatant” truths are often ignored, or tacitly avoided. It helps that the overall tone of Over the Stones, Under the Stars is one of longing and the hope to salvage, as if all that we’ve lost is something we should try to snatch back. Wirewalker (drummer Joe Talia and bass player Ben Bourke) brings a new spaciousness and extravagance required for the task, while Collette’s vocals have evolved from his hushed confessional roots into a more poised and commanding presence.

He’s certainly learnt a handful more roles since 2007’s Future Suture and none sound underdeveloped. Ned Collette & Wirewalker is a severe rock band of elemental proportions: this is music as foreboding weather, all downcast greys and apocalyptic reds, thick and blustery and beautiful. ‘Aspect’ sounds like the sun birthing from swampland, a percussive stagger strung up by incandescent guitar chimes, a drowsy rumination at sunrise after many furrow-browed hours on the red. The following song ‘Why We Can Be Apart’ breaks the spell and thrusts us straight back into the glare of summer, with a focus on the personal. Indeed, there are tender moments here, and even oblique ones, but the crispness of Collette’s scattered world-weary proclamations tend to possess the theme.

He returns to that “golden age” twice on Over the Stones, Under the Stars. “The gold is just a stipend and the age is just for show.” There’s nothing subliminal about this. Ned Collette is backed by a permanent band now, and he’s got the courage to be demonstrative. In a time when white collegiate obscurantism dominates rock music, Over the Stones comes as an enlivening slap in the face: rock music as a grandiloquent cautionary tale. And when things do look like they’re going to shit, Collette’s tales are imbued with importance and sound strikingly vindicating. Australia doesn’t have many better songwriters, neither past nor present."

- Shaun Prescott

credits

released October 23, 2009

Ned Collette - Voice, guitar, organ, piano, mellotron
Ben Bourke - Bass, harmonies
Joe Talia - Drums, percussion, harmonies

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