Back in 2014 we reviewed The World is Round So I’ll Go Round, an album from Australian songwriter Oscar Lush. The record, taking inspiration from heavyweights like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, was a remarkably assured début, blending lush arrangements and emotive lyrics that got us excited:
“The songwriting is very strong (it came as no surprise to discover he writes poetry in his spare time), each track spinning stories of love and loss and fear and isolation and all those other things that really good art tries to deal with”
Lush is back with ‘Nightmare Song’, the lead single from a forthcoming EP. The song was written following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner last year, exploring violence by white men and officers of the law against people of colour both in the US and in Lush’s native Australia. “The song [also] explores my own country’s history with the mistreatment and death of Aboriginal peoples in police custody,” Lush explains, “particularly the death of John Pat. I’ve always felt strongly that music and art is something that can be used greatly to bring about awareness and from awareness hopefully we can achieve change and equality.”
Lush positions himself on the outside looking in, avoiding any danger of appropriating suffering by making the song very much from his own POV. The result is a track disbelieving but not surprised, a modern tragic ballad shot through with senseless loss. The crimes are described simply and without flourish so that nothing clouds the plain simple truth of matter. These men and boys were murdered by people in authority.
“How can you walk free
knowing what you did?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOgpJf9DK3A
Oscar Lush’s new EP, Out of Sight, Out of Mind, will be released on the 1st February on Hawk Moth Records (check out the artwork below). If you missed The World Is Round so I’ll Go Round when it came out, then grab a copy here.
Art by Jane Lush