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  Augie March - Moo, You Bloody ChoirBy Daniel JohnsonAugust 13, 2007 Augie March are one of the most consistently brilliant bands of the past decade and you've probably never heard of them. That's not a dig on your with-it-ness, just the sad facts for the long-toiling Australian exports, the combined result of market forces (bad U.S. distribution) and an unwillingness on their part to allow gimmicks to enter their creative process. But don't feel bad for Augie March. They've been revered here privately (perhaps a bit too privately) for years by those in the know. And back in Australia, they win awards and chart successfully and are kind of a big deal. So don't feel bad for them. Feel bad for us. Their latest release, the unfortunately titled Moo, You Bloody Choir, had an Aussie street date in March of '06 and is only just now seeing release here, making it a good thing that Augie March infuse their albums with a vintage that only sounds better with age. Moo, You Bloody Choir, in its unassuming way, is the culmination of all that Augie March do so well - the dense, literate lyrics; the textural haunt of their studio arrangements, which show an insatiable appetite for rare instrumentation; the casual precision of their ever-tightening ensemble playing - and a return to the energy of innocence that has waned a bit as they've moved from fumbling brilliance to cool-headed craft. What began in '98 with the sprawling, tattered Waltz, an EP which bookishly reimagined the plaintive rock of the just-deceased Jeff Buckley, has now snowballed into a three-record run of overly long, overachieving masterpieces of pop epics in various degrees of experimental undress. 2001's Sunset Studies felt creaky and wood-smoked, with its tape-stretched crackle and a lyric sheet that was aghast at nature. Then came Strange Bird, which found songwriter and singer Glenn Richards indulging his love of word-craft to a disparate fault: the tunes were great, they just never hit it off with the text. Moo, You Bloody Choir lacks that record's pretensions, moderating instead Richard's love of clever expression by uncluttering his profundity and only flaunting the sentiments he really owns. There's also a sturdy resonance in his voice from years of touring and studio work that wasn't there before and he draws on it commandingly. There comes a point where an artist looks back and recognizes that all of their periods, most now neglected, are their children and embraces them again as part of their self. In rock years, Augie March are middle aged by now, and Moo, You Bloody Choir is just such a point for them. It draws all the right amounts of brilliance through naivetŽ, and refinement through self-awareness, from their own body of work. Their journey to appreciation on this continent may have taken the slow boat when it could have taken a jet, but their kind of excellence has a built-in perseverance. We'll all be talking about Augie March soon enough.
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