Cable Ties - Far Enough
Cable Ties are a fierce, tense rock 'n' roll trio made up of Jenny McKechnie (guitar, vocals), Shauna Boyle (drums), and Nick Brown (bass). They take the three-minute punk burner and stretch it past breaking point to deliver smouldering feminist anthems. New album Far Enough brings a towering wall of 70s hard rock and proto-rock to songs that explore hope, despair, and anger but offer no easy answers. Cable Ties' fundamental elements - a driving rhythm section, anxious and emotive guitar playing, defiant, passionate songwriting, and McKechnie's earthshaking voice - are complicated on Far Enough by nuance and ambivalence.
"I'm no longer righteously angry, looking out and shouting at the world", says McKechnie. "I'm looking at myself, and sometimes I don't like what I see."
Far Enough takes terse, urgent riffs and pushes them relentlessly, searching for transcendence through hypnotic repetition and unflagging intensity. Throughout the album, righteous anger is peppered with confusion and self-censure. Songs like 'Self-Made Man', 'Anger's Not Enough', and 'Hope' examine the pressure point between activism and fatalism, buoyancy and futility - and ultimately opt for hope.
"Hope is a really important theme on the album," says McKechnie. "In the past, I thought I could change things. I thought if I pointed out how messed up everything is, then people would see a clear path to fixing these problems. By the time I started writing this album, I had lost this hope. But it's about the importance of getting hope back, even when you can see no logical reason to have it. Without hope, anger becomes despair or bitterness."
A beautifully apt reminder in the current climate.
Far Enough is the band's second LP and is set for release Friday March 27 via Poison City (AUS/NZ) and internationally via Merge Records. Tune in to PBS all week for your chance to win a copy (members only). Not a member? Join up today.
Cover photo by Lisa Businovski.
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