Mind Your Langridge #3
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Following the release of Jo Meares’ 2022 album Dream Hotel, and the live album and film that followed last year, he now turns his focus to his Melbourne band, the decidedly more rock-leaning Silver Bullets.
Highly prolific and creatively collaborative, Jo Meares knows how to gather a group of musicians around him to bring his songs to life. His last solo album, the cinematic and atmospheric Dream Hotel, featured a number of week known Sydney musicians (Reuben Alexander, Matt Galvin, Jessica Cassar, Jessie Newling, Michael Bridges) with Melbourne producer and musician Anth Dymke at the helm.
Overlapping with that project, Meares also corralled together the dark and evocative Melbourne-based rock quartet, the Silver Bullets, allowing him to explore an edgier and at times noisier sound.
After playing a number of live shows, the band decided to record some demos. They were initially intended as a document of their sound but on hearing the recordings it quickly became clear the group had recorded something quite special.
“We soon realised that we had the makings of a pretty strong album,” Meares enthuses. “The songs on the album have all been recorded before and released on my earlier albums so we simply picked the songs that worked best with the band and recorded them.”
“The album, for me, is as much Mark McCartney’s as mine. It’s a guitar rock album and he is the guitar player. We’ve been playing together 8 years now so he knows my songs in depth. Mark Carson also brings an enormous amount of groove and charisma with his double bass and Charlie Barker brings a lot of grace and melody with her saw and backing vocals,” explains Meares. “She also softens our perhaps masculine edge!”
Much in the same way that Bob Dylan is constantly re-shaping and reinterpreting his own songs, with different musicians, so to does Meares, always finding new angles and sometimes new meanings in the new versions.
The lead single ‘Lone Gun‘ opens with a dark, primitive and rhythmic bass groove before Meares and co enter the frame, upping the ante as they travel through the verses and chorus, punctuating the tale of an evil figure with drum crescendos and slashing guitar courtesy of Mark McCartney.
“I had a lot of fun writing this song,” confesses Meares. “It’s trying to create an image of the most sinister character possible. He has no care for anybody or anything except for the dancing girl with devil-green eyes. The original recording on the Back To The World album was kind of a groove. This recording is more sleazy and aggressive and catches the feel much better!”
Meares was also lucky enough to have legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb’s son Christian Webb play piano on the song ’Neil Young Saved My Life’, a song about failure and the redemptive power of song. On ‘Birdsong Bells‘ Meares tells the tale of a settler whose wife gets bitten by a snake and dies. He gradually goes insane with the sound of the bellbirds and his grief and sees her riding her pony through the ghost gums every evening.
‘Terrified Of Love‘ is Meares’s version of a pop song, while ‘I Loved You More That Day‘ details “moving out to Broken Hill for a year with my then girlfriend and how as soon as we hit the city it all seemed to fall apart.”
Jo Meares’ Silver Bullets stands as a compelling reframing of Meares’ songs. Shaded in gothic and alt-country twang, jangly and shadowy folk rock, it conjures up the poetic sway and swagger of a rock ‘n’ roll corner bar on the streets of Melbourne.
