by Cash Savage & The Last Drinks
Cash Savage & The Last Drinks’ new album The Hypnotiser is big. It’s really big. It packs a punch, and not like a drunken smack in the face. I want to describe it as an honest album, but what does that mean? What you see is what you get? Well, yes, but more than that too.
A couple of years ago on The Breakfast Spread, Cash performed a very early version of the song now titled 95km To Sandy Point.
Crispi: So, what’s the song called?
Cash: Whatever the distance is from Melbourne to Sandy Point.
Crispi: Er…it’s about 95ks
Cash: 95km to Sandy Point.
So yes, what you see is what you get, and The Hypnotiser album continues the honesty and frankness of Cash and her band The Last Drinks. But importantly, it also extends it.
Together they tell stories, and whether personal or fictional they are crafted with such gritty conviction – lyrically, vocally, instrumentally, collectively. With this conviction come bruised shades of vulnerability. Sure, there’s still a sense of one’s own ramshackle drunken mistakes and regrets, but this time around the songs as stories and as moments have such gravity; they are so human and affecting.
There are many special and thrilling moments throughout the album; Hannah Welch’s chilling co-vocals on Something Better, the sparse opening to Early Morning Come Down Blues then the horns and brass kicking in, not to mention the fifteen-piece choir on, particularly on Hypnotiser and I’m In Love. The choir is a significant addition to the sound. It doesn’t smooth out the ferocity of Cash’s vocals and persona, but adds depth and weight to it; they’re gang who’ve got her back as Cash faces her own fight in the music.
The warmest moment comes from I’m In Love, which resounds as a revelatory admission: I’m gonna bare my soul/Ain’t gonna reference no lonesome road/I confess/My affection has grown and grown/I’m in love. This is the easing of a grimace, so hard to smooth from a tough brow.
By Maddy Mac - The Breakfast Spread, every week day from 6am
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