THE AERIAL MAPS – THE SUNSET PARK

THE AERIAL MAPS – THE SUNSET PARK

Beware all ye who enter; for in Adam Gibson’s own words, “There’s no Summer Bay” – here, or anywhere. Having won the Overland Poetry Award for best spoken word release with their debut album In The Blinding Sunlight, Aerial Maps have followed up with a more adventurous second album. Where their debut reflected upon an Australia of years gone by tinged in Polaroid colours and traveled on vinyls bench seats, Sunset Park is a dark narrative tale of four troubled characters – mouthy sheilas and beer-soaked young men – a manuscript worked on over ten years that would have and could have been a novel. As such the listener needs to buy into Sunset Park, for while each piece lives on their own, they hang together most effectively as a story. With cohorts Simon Holmes and Sean Kennedy providing the musical backdrop to Gibson’s words, the songs (or chapters) swings from the heat haze of The Port of Fremantle to the electro meance of How Dark is the Night and the pop of Salvation Road. Gibson is not afraid to name check his lyrical influences – “Treeless Plain”, “Khe Sanh” – and Holmes and Kennedy come on board with musical homages to match – elements of The Triffids, Don Walker, and Midnight Oil are clear. Sunset Park is adventure that deserves reward.

*** 1/2

You May Also Like

Comments are closed.