Thirsty Work |
Source: Time Off |
Author: Julian Porter |
Date Published: Sunday Aug 01st, 2004 |
Back in Dubbo, Stack’s mates from Triple J Unearthed winners Drown may have thought he was getting a little bit ahead of himself. After all, they’d been playing rock’n’roll together since primary school, when Thistlethwayte was still learning scales.
Luckily for Matt Baker (guitars) and Karl Robertson (drums), Stack never forgot his old mates and, as it turns out, the frontman of their re-formed and re-named band isn’t such a musical ponce after all.
“I learnt piano from my mum who teaches classical piano as a profession,” Thirsty Merc singer/songwriter Thistlethwayte explains. “So I did that for years, from when I was five till I was 12, and after that I got into jazz and blues. But I’ve listened to a whole stack of different stuff. Even in my early teens I was listening to Back In Black by AC/DC and Paranoid by Black Sabbath and those sort of things. I even liked Iron Maiden at one stage.
“Then I got more into Cream and Jimi Hendrix; Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and some of the other British bands. Eventually I moved onto Stevie Wonder and all that kind of stuff. That was when I was starting to write my own stuff, so I guess that’s why that was kind of the style that I became identified with.”
And while it’s a far cry from Thirsty Merc’s straight ahead pop-rock, it’s a style Thistlethwayte sees coming through more subtly in his writing.
“I think it certainly has shone through at times in my vocals. It’s a part of where I’ve come from and I think there’ll always be that blues or jazz element to what I’m doing. Some of the song structures hint to it [and] melodic structures hint to it in a big way. Even a song like [radio hit] ‘Emancipate Myself’, which has those spoken-word bits going on, that’s almost a reference to some of the beat poetry that was coupled with jazz phrasing, only it’s over a rock setting.
“I find that a lot of jazz soloists, saxophonists, horn-players and stuff, they all put more notes in the bar than rhythmically it might actually dictate. It’s more about the actual contour of the phrase. I’ve sort of employed that in some of the phrasing on the album.”
Maybe so, but a listen to their newly released, self-titled debut confirms Thistlethwayte and bandmates shouldn’t be confused with anything other than the classic Oz-rock movement.
“That’s certainly not all we do. I’d have to admit we’re pretty much a straight-up rock act but those are a few of the things that I suppose give it an edge, give it some of its own flavour. The fact that it’s pretty concise, hard-hitting, punchy rock with melodies, that it’s pretty raw, that its got an Australian outlook… those seem to be the things people can always define us by.”
Thirsty Merc is out now on Warner Music.
