Tales and legends of isolation, love, and lust from another time.
Halfway is an Australian band that has been around for twenty-five years now. ‘The Styx’ is their ninth album and sees the return of founding member Chris Dale after a six-year absence. In many ways, it is a concept album, specifically in that the songs are based in both time and place. The Styx is a river based at Stanage Bay, which is a small, reasonably isolated place on the south bank of the river. The songs are timed around Christmas 1986 and explore themes of love, isolation, and betrayal. As such, it doesn’t make for a jolly listen; it has, however, a very worthy feel to the work.
It opens with the title track, which has a slow, eerie tension; you can almost taste the mist rolling in. The introductory spoken vocals are mixed slightly back and distorted, and the phrase “Sometimes the night plays tricks on you” is repeated several times, setting the listener up for a slightly disturbing experience. This is accentuated throughout the album with unusual ambient sounds that do feel slightly unsettling. Things that go bump in the night come to mind.
The band felt the stories these songs portray were so important that the way they recorded the album was quite different from their usual way of working. “This one started quietly. Just my guitar and vocals, layering it track by track and then recording the drums last. A weird back-to-front album, but it gave us the chance to put the story/songs first rather than concentrate on how they would work live.” John Busby tells us.
The first single from the album is ‘The Palace’. It has some delightful pedal steel work on it and references their admiration of The Smiths. “Dreaming even in the remotest of places. It is a song for the outliers and people who live in the margins”.
All the songs have a definite ebb and flow with guitars and keys sweeping around the speakers, which does give it a somewhat tidal feel. They manage to blend alt-country and indie rock seamlessly.
It must have felt to these young men like a place that was very far from anywhere and anyone. The isolation can feel palpable within these retrospective and occasionally cinematic set of songs, all of which have a very definite storyline. This is a nicely produced and thought-provoking album grounded in simpler pre-Internet times.
