ARTiST: The Waifs
TiTLE: Sun Dirt Water
LABEL: Jarrah
GENRE: Folk-Rock
TiME: 46:41 min
SiZE: 59,7 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Sep-08-2007
RELEASE DATE: Sep-01-2007
WEBSiTE: n/a
Track List:
01. Pony 03:34
02. Sun Dirt Water 03:38
03. Vermillion 03:48
04. How Many Miles 04:04
05. Without You 04:34
06. Sad Sailor Song 02:58
07. Get Me Some 03:52
08. Eternity 02:59
09. Sweetest Dream 03:22
10. Goodbye 03:04
11. Stay 02:30
12. Love Let Me Down 05:27
13. Feeling Sentimental 02:51
Release Notes:
Sun Dirt Water is an album born of time and
distance. The geographic space between
singer-songwriters Donna Simpson, Vikki Thorn and
Josh Cunningham, and the long hiatus since their
last studio triumph, Up All Night, created a kind of
vacuum that these new songs could hardly wait to
fill. "We had more songs to choose from than we've
ever had," says Josh. "We ended up recording 21 or
22, so the hardest part by far was working out what
to leave out and what fit together, to give the fans
something that has some unity and variety and still
represents where we've come to." Vikki agrees. "This
was by far the most difficult Waifs album, in terms
of finding cohesion with our different songwriting
styles. But for that reason I feel it's our most
interesting and risky album to date." It's Vikki who
sets the bar with the title track. "Sun Dirt Water"
is a worldly, seductive groove that meanders between
styles with insouciant authority - slinky jazz,
elegant country, smoky blues - and effortlessly
nails what Josh calls "our finest recorded moment to
date." "I think the recording has a really great
energy to it and the vocal is the best vocal on any
Waifs record. It really sets the tone for the album,
for me, cause it has that great, liberated energy
and expression in it." From the darkly evocative
storytelling of Donna's "Vermillion" and "Sad Sailor
Song" to Josh's upbeat country spiritual,
"Eternity", this sense of liberation runs an
exquisitely loose thread through the Waifs' fifth
album. The eerie introspection of "Love Let Me
Down"; the gleeful, organ-fuelled pop of "Stay"; the
electric riff rock of "No Such Thing As Goodbye" and
the old-time ukulele thrum of "Sentimental" are
worlds apart stylistically, but they spring from the
same well of timeless roots influences, and an
instinct for collaborative expression that only
comes with years traveling the same road.For those
who came in late, the road looms large and long in
the Waifs' inspirational tale of self-determined
international success. It intersected for sisters
Donna and Vikki and guitarist Josh in a remote
corner of the Western Australian desert some 15
years ago.Their mobile cottage industry of
campfire-crafted songs and independently recorded,
gold-selling CDs slowly reached critical mass in
Australia between '96 and '00, while their
captivating on-stage chemistry spilled into a
contagious festival following through Europe and
North America.The Waifs' rainswept radio smash of
'02, "London Still", led to a US release deal with
Compass Records and ever more touring - with Bob
Dylan among others - while their aforementioned
watershed album, Up All Night, stormed mainstream
and alternative charts back home, and picked up ARIA
Awards including Best Independent, and Best Blues
And Roots Release.