LIKE THIS ARTIST

LATEST ARTICLES

To turn a favourite music industry buzz-phrase on its head, you get a few months to make your second album, and your whole life to make your first. No doubt that's something Melbourne's Blackchords, and in particular bandleader and songwriter Nick Milwright, is all too aware of.

As Milwright notes, the songs that comprise this record have been waiting for their chance to shine for some time now. "I always felt bad that there are these songs that I've written and played in the past that have now just disappeared from existence cause I was never able to capture them on a record," he explains. "So finally being able to record is almost like a spring clean. I've recorded them now and I can move on. I'm free to start working on new ideas with the knowledge that I'm not going to forget or lose these old ones because they've finally been captured!"

Not that anyone would want to move on from these songs, which capitalise on everything Blackchords have come to stand for: emotional and lyrical depth, a widescreen sense of melody and drama, and stunning arrangements.

The record begins with At Worlds End, a deep, dark, and jagged opener that draws you in instantly with a beat you find yourself dancing to and a chorus you sing along with. The track spits you out with its abrupt finish, then the beautifully moody 22 swells in, invoking the spirit of early Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, yet is something wholly new of the musical touchstones and hallmarks that Milwright and his band mates have soaked up through a life spent poring over everything music has to offer.

Take the gentle, swooning These Lights, or Sinking Like Stone. These are songs wrought from a childhood spent with- as Milwright puts it - "the usual suspects" (Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, John Lennon) and more recently Silver Mt Zion and Gillian Welch, but far from wearing their influences on their sleeves, Blackchords melt them down into a well of surprisingly deep, emotional melody.

For Milwright, the process of creating Blackchords was oddly moving, as he and the band watched (or listened?) as songs that had begun life as bare-bones sketches and refrains hummed in quiet moments sprang into lush, melodic life.

"There were definite moments of just being so happy and so sure that we were walking the right path," he recalls of the recording sessions. "For instance, hearing the first notes of the cello playing Raise My Hands. The whole time when the string quartet was recording I just sat there. I had goose bumps down my spine and was shaking my head. I couldn't believe how amazing it sounded. 

In contrast to the opening At World's End, the ghostly lament that is Disappear closes the album with a song that, though quiet, is deceptively powerful - the record may be many things, and the final moments may be softly delivered, but this is no 'fade away' moment. It closes the book, for now, until the day we discover what comes next in Blackchords' story.

So, now that Blackchords is complete and ready to be set free, what does the future hold for Blackchords? Milwright's response is atypically modest. "We're just eager to get out there and push it as far as it can go. Blackchords just ultimately want to make music for the rest of our lives and get better and better as musicians. So if we can do that we'll be very happy."

If Blackchords is anything to go by, they won't be the only happy ones.