Published on May 19, 1999
Despite my coming into your home or office each day and ranting
about such and such group or album, there’s still a lot about music
that I don’t think I will ever understand. I’ll never understand
how a label can botch the promotion of an artist’s best album ever
to the point where the disc is considered a failure. I’ll never
understand why certain types of music take off in popularity, then
die.
And, in the case of Australian singer/songwriter Margot Smith,
I’ll never understand how someone can totally eschew the
commercialistic trappings of music and release an album that is not
only from the heart, but is fun to listen to as well. Such is the
case with her most recent album
Taste.
With the help of Steve Kilbey – best known for his work with The
Church – Smith streaks through 14 songs in what seems like a few
minutes. For Smith, the art of songwriting is simple: Say what you
have to, then move on to the next piece. It’s an interesting
concept that would never last more than a second in the offices of
the major labels, where if the song isn’t four minutes long, it’s
not worth thinking about. But it’s a concept that works well for
Smith in the context of
Taste.
It’s not that Smith is incapable of writing songs that would fit
on the radio. Tracks like “Fight It Out In Heaven” and “Bleedmore”
have that special twinkle to them that are poppy enough to fall
under radio’s umbrella.
But what sets Smith apart is the raw, melancholic honesty that
pours from her songs. Tracks like “Hope” (“I hope you choke / Your
dreams go up in smoke / You regret the words you spoke / Like I
do”), “Creature” and “Everything” (“All my dreams are made up of
thousands of / dreams torn from somebody else’s life”) carry a
powerful punch that is sure to move the listener.
Sure, we’ve had our share of raw emotion female singers of late,
like Liz Phair. (Part of me wanted to compare Smith to Ani
DiFranco, but the musical styles are not similar.) But Smith
doesn’t seem to be concerned about whether her single will hit the
top of the charts; it’s almost like the music is therapy to her,
and each song a particular demon being exorcised.
It’s a quick listen, but not always an easy one. Still,
Taste is worth searching out (it has yet to be released in
America), and suggests that these shores will be hearing more from
Smith in the very near future.