More People Should Really Know About: Lachlan Bryan

It might be anathema to some here at AUK HQ, but if you asked this writer who his favourite Australian “Americana” artist is, the answer is “not Paul Kelly.” As you pick yourself back up after falling out of your chair with apoplexy, let me take the time to talk about Melbourne’s Lachlan Bryan. Bryan, along with his band The Wildes and in collaboration with various other artists, is not only a rip-roaring live act but also the writer of what I consider to be some of the best songs in the Americana vein over the past decade. Anyone who has seen him live will surely attest that he is a born raconteur and, for someone who lives way down under, he is a regular visitor to our shores, seemingly with an annual pass to play several sets each year at the Maverick Festival.

Bryan grew up in Melbourne, surrounded by a music-loving family. As he stated in an interview, “I had aunts and uncles who were 50 years older than me, and they were all like Hank Williams fans. A couple of my uncles had been playing in bands in the sixties, and back in those days, a lot of Australian bands would cover songs that were hits in America and the UK and effectively pass them off as their own. This was way before the internet, of course, and the globalisation of music, but they were obsessed with cowboy music, so when I first picked up a guitar, I would play with my uncles quite a bit, and the songs that they taught me were by the likes of Hank Williams and Leadbelly. I suppose that’s why what I play isn’t strictly country music; Americana kind of covers it as it’s got some blues and folk music in there”.

Bryan’s first release was under the guise of The Wildes with their 2009 album, “Ballad Of A Young Married Man”. It was well received in Australia, with the title song still standing strong as an excellent murder ballad in the grand tradition of, well, murder ballads, while ‘Nothing’ was couched in an air of desolate despair despite some glowing pedal steel work with the song sounding ultimately like an early Calexico number. Despite their local success, The Wildes broke up, and Bryan went on to record a solo album, “Shadow Of The Gun” in 2011, an album which reflected time spent touring in the States and which has at least two solid gold songs contained within; the gorgeous slow country duet which is ‘Whistle And Waltz’ where Bryan sings with Kasey Chambers, along with the rollicking country cemetery song which is ‘I’d Rather Sing In Churches’. Reviving The Wildes, although with the band now relegated to accompanying band status, “Black Coffee” (2013) won awards in Australia for Best Alternative Country Album, and it portrayed Bryan digging ever deeper into his particular take on what I suppose we can call Gothic Americana. ‘Deathwish Country’ is a slow slope of a song replete with images of doom and despair, a cinematic number which has echoes of gory movies such as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in its bones. This was followed up in 2015 by “The Mountain”, an album which reflected the time Bryan had spent in New Orleans in the intermission. There’s less of the gothic touch here, with the album more centred around personal songs, but on ‘Dugdemona’, Bryan easily slips into a voodoo hoodoo vibe as he traces Dylan’s fiddle-laced sound on “Desire”.

Bryan’s first UK appearances were in the wake of “The Mountain”, and he was immediately welcomed by those lucky enough to see him. “Some Girls Quite Like Country Music” cemented his reputation when it was released in 2018. A superb album, it opens with the desolate paean ‘I Hope That I’m Wrong’ before creeping into the dark undertones of ‘A Portrait Of The Artist As A Middle-Aged Man’. In a reflection of his earlier ‘Whistle And Waltz’, Bryan here turns in another gorgeous country duet in the shape of ‘The Basics Of Love’, sung with Shanley Del. You can get a taste of Bryan’s onstage ramblings when you read his description of the making of the album… “Blood was spilled on the studio floor, many songs were harmed or even killed in the process of making this album. Pianos were deliberately detuned, expensive guitars were accidentally crushed (and later repaired). Songs were re-recorded because they were “played too well” the first time around, and lyrics were rewritten because they were “not mean enough”. We even delayed recording a month because Shaun’s bass strings were “too new”. There’s a song about a cemetery, a trailer-trash midlife crisis, a forty-year romance, a promiscuous girlfriend, a city we like, a pre-apocalyptic cautionary tale and a missing person’s report, just to name a few. If our albums are our children, this one’s the one that took up smoking at seven years old, got a tattoo at twelve, hacked the high school computer network at fifteen, but always remembered to offer a seat to the old lady on the tram and volunteered at the soup kitchen through uni whilst living in a squat and dating the son of a notorious gangland figure. She’s quite the contrary one.”

Stymied by Covid and with several international tours cancelled, Bryan & The Wildes released“Nearest Misses Live”, an excellent souvenir of their live shows, which filled the gap as he and the band were recording what is, to date, their latest disc. “As Long As It’s Not Us” was released in 2021, with Bryan able to tour on the back of it. It’s another excellent album; the Wildes sounding pumped up, almost new wave at times, while Bryan continues to astonish with his songwriting. ‘I Went Down’ is a powerful, dark country rock number which basically warns folk not to go near rivers, as bad things happen there, referencing Neil Young’s ‘Down By The River’ along with other LA luminaries and murder ballads. ‘Quit While We’re Ahead’ is a dead ringer for late-era Leonard Cohen (circa “The Future”), and ‘Never Said A Word’ is a darkly romantic song about an encounter with a femme fatale who demands the singer recite poetry by Lautrement to her as she carves her initials into his shackled arms.

While we await a new album, Bryan has been collaborating with Hannah Aldridge, co-writing several songs and touring together; while he and The Wildes were the house band on an album released by Australian soap opera star Alan Fletcher (of Neighbours fame), it’s a surprisingly good listen. More significantly, he teamed up with Australian country singer Catherine Britt, the duo calling themselves The Pleasures and releasing an album, “The Beginning Of The End”, in 2023. No surprise, it ploughs the darker edge of country music but in a more loose-limbed, at times almost rockabilly, style. Their devastating duet, ‘Every Story Has Two Sides’, comes across as if Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood were kidnapped, drugged up and forced to sing a song written by Charles Bukowski.

Apparently, there’s a new album from The Pleasures in the pipeline, and we eagerly await new music from The Wildes. In the meantime, Lachlan Bryan is soon to commence his annual onslaught on the UK. Listen to the albums, and please go out and see him. You won’t be disappointed.