Van Diemen’s Land

An Edge solo effort that, whilst naturally fairly low-key, easily picks up the album quality from the not-bad but not-great “Helter Skelter” effort. There’s something slightly anthemic about the song, though, probably in the combination of humble arpeggios in a European folk style (presumably Irish) but a vocal melody that encourages a rise in volume, a rise and fall in dynamics, and the lyrics that sing bitterly of injustice. Perhaps most strikingly, there’s the lines about how ‘the poor’ tear their hands/As they tear the soil.

Yet overall, “Van Diemen’s Land” is a ludicrously basic song – arrangement wise, there’s vocal, guitar and on the album a hint of organ creeping in at the end, before the fadeout. We’re then, for some reason, given a brief excerpt of an interview in which the interviewer asks a slightly long and rambling question and gets a rubbish answer from Adam. And that’s it – the whole shebang, no more than three tracks on a tape machine, if that, and three minutes. Yet it’s affecting, and thus better than “Helter Skelter” even as it doesn’t quite beat what it leads up to, “Desire”.

~ by 4trak on June 13, 2008.