Los Angeles – Fraser A. Gorman is from the same Australian metropolis as Courtney Barnett, he’s opened for her on tour, she’s appeared in his music video for “Shiny Gun”, and they are both associated with Milk Records. And despite the fact that both musicians have perfected the art of rambling, narrative-based songwriting, do not just assume that Gorman to be her male carbon-copy or an artist riding on the coattails of her success; both artists came up around the same time in the suddenly red hot Melbourne underground scene.
“I met Courtney when I first moved to Melbourne. I was about 19 or 20, and she was 24,” said Gorman in a phone interview with Best New Bands. “She was a bartender at a pub called The Northcote Social Club and she used to play slide guitar in a band called Immigrants Union, which I used to go watch them play sometimes, and we just became friends. And we would do like little gigs together or that kind of stuff. So yeah, that was how we met and we’ve been quite good mates.”
Gorman specializes in updating the classic country-rock Americana of artists like Hank Williams and Bob Dylan (“Broken Hands” features the line “country music sounds to me like rock ‘n roll”); he adds a touch of plainspoken, humorous lyricism to his songs, giving them a lighthearted touch that those two artists’ songs were decidedly lacking. In addition to classic artists like Williams and Dylan, he noted other artists as having a strong influence on his sound: Bright Eyes, Wilco (who he covers live), Kurt Vile, and Towns Van Zandt. While his earliest songs were heavy on the American country-western sound, that influence has gradually faded on subsequent releases, introducing a more fleshed-out, rock ‘n roll sound:
“I think it just kind of naturally happened; like I sort of started playing I guess like, pretty kind of straight-up country music, kind of I guess more like Hank Williams sort of stuff. But that kind of music can be, I guess…I found that it can be pretty limiting. I wanted to sort of like yeah, change it up a bit and make it a little more interesting. So I guess it was like a natural shift…[I] mainly [write about] things that like, happened to me (laughs). Good or bad. Yeah, I sort of just like usually write songs through my own eyes, sort of. Or like, through my own experiences – that’s probably the best way to start…I’m sort of like finishing writing my second record now and some of it is a bit different again, maybe it’s not entirely as autobiographical as my first album…I’m always trying to improve my songwriting, like look for new kind of ways to create music. So I’m always trying to make the next song I write better than the last one. So yeah, it’s always evolving.”
Instead of focusing solely on Hank Williams-style stripped back country-rock, Gorman smartly added a variety of instrumentation to the standard guitar/bass/drum sound that is a hallmark of the genre. Instead, Slow Gum adds horn sections, string sections, and gorgeously striking vocal harmonies that punctuate his thought-provoking lyricism. When asked whether the added instrumentation was the result of his own playing or a group effort, he explained:
“Yeah, I played some of it. I’ve got kind of…it’s nice to have a lot of friends in Melbourne who are like pretty competent players. I can kind of call upon them to play on my album. So that was kind of nice. So it’s kind of a record of songs with all of my friends. It’s kind of like a nice, wholesome way to make music.”
As mentioned before, Gorman is a product of the bourgeoning Melbourne scene. Barnett may be the biggest name in recent years to come from the coastal Australian city, but artists like Gorman and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are beginning to break into the worldwide independent music consciousness. Gorman offered his take on why the city is such a hotspot for talent:
“Um, I’m not sure. I think for a start it’s like the only real place in Australia where you can really play music, like for example, it’s the only place where there’s like a decent amount of venues to play and you can sort of play gigs throughout the week if you want to. There’s more of a music audience and all that. So I guess it’s like a music capital of Australia. So I guess that’s why bands go there. And I think that it’s so [far] away from the rest of the world, bands sort of really like have to compete to kind of gain some kind of attention from the world. It’s just a small and far-out place.”
Fraser A. Gorman just wrapped up his first United States tour before continuing on to the UK and Australia. Check his Facebook page for more information.
Matt Matasci
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