THE WAIFS – TEMPTATION

As soon as this record opens, you know you’re in familiar territory – this is The Waifs, as you know and love them, wrapped in a crisp and loud CD, gorgeous artwork and carefree attitude. It’s a warmly recorded, breezy and bluesy folk jam, with the distinctly Aussie vintage croon of Donna Simpson leading I Learn The Hardway. “I learn the hard way, if I learn at all”, she implores, which implies some sort of arduous journey which led to the creation of this sixth studio outing for ARIA kings of yore. But as the liner notes state, this record was recorded very quickly as a last minute decision, just a bit of fun. How that effects the music depends on what you like; this album has some pleasing rough edges and a fool-proof live-to-tape aesthetic that really lets the songs breathe. Buffalo with its alarming breaks of harmony sounds like rain splatters on a bus windshield; Moses and the Lamb sees Josh Cunningham visit the church of Tom Waits’ megaphone; and Falling recalls the whimsy of the early Waifs recordings via Bob Dylan’s I Want You. This is a highly relaxed, easy, rollicking melancholy folk record. Kind of what the Waifs are best at really.

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