Mess and Noise Review
Slowly the reviews for the album are coming in, and also slowly, they’ll make it onto the web site, here’s a rippa from Sam Fell which was in Mess and Noise (www.messandnoise.com).
Ryder
Get Up, Come On, Move On, I Feel Alone
LP (2008, Independent)
Related: Ryder.
I first saw Ryder play around two or three years ago, in duo format, supporting Mia Dyson and Jaimi Faulkner at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel. I remember seeing only their last two songs, but I also remember being suitably impressed. So you can imagine the interest level was quite high when, all these years later, their debut LP landed on my desk.
“Urban roots” is how Ryder bill themselves, but as we all know, “roots” is the most overused term in Australian music today, so that could mean anything. What it means in this case is a rather beguiling mix of blues-based folk-infused pop music, culminating in a record which on first listen, seems to tentatively stand up nicely on its own.
Fronted by the full, rich voice of Jade Myconos, Ryder are ostensibly a four-piece, albeit in this case with some added instrumentalists to fill out the record. Opener, ‘Alibi’, which is the single doing the rounds at the moment, lays bare the group’s blues influence; a head-nodding groove courtesy of some dirty acoustic slide, but it’s possessed of some serious pop sensibility as well. After this track though, the mood changes quite dramatically, leaning further towards the pop side of things. Things do dip and weave though, but the band still holds together as a cohesive unit.
Overall, Get Up has a fairly dark feel to it. Time will tell though whether this sort of melancholic, yet melodic music will strike a chord with the masses.
by Sam Fell
