Hobbies Galore boss Alex Macfarlane steps out under his own name once again with another album of trademark quixotic prog-folk song that seems determinedly at odds with a good deal of other contemporary Australian music. In short, Macfarlane, as with Hobbies Galore in general, seems to hold little regard for current trends and interests, instead indulging a kind of record shop interest in the off-centre and arcane, his songwriting buried somewhere in the collective sediment of Fred Frith, Robyn Hitchcock and Anthony Moore. 'Eccentric' might cover it, though these are also patient, often private sounding songs that are all the better for not feeling as if they're demanding of your attention. Bucolic Berlin School informed electronics segue into melodic vignettes than then pass into guitar soli reveries, before then reversing and working backwards through that same constellation. While the tracks are individually labelled and there's much invention on show, you could easily understand Gleams and Louring as a singular piece woven from a variety of rabbit hole diversions and inspirations, one of those spring-nights-on-the-veranda albums that lands just so under a particular kind of liquor-/lysergic-infused light.
FFO: Fred Frith, Robyn Hitchcock, Anthony Moore, Robert Wyatt
